Dead Men's Words
by notmanos
Summary: (Season five timeline) Dean goes missing, and it seems to be connected to a solo hunting mission Dean handled while Sam was still at college years ago. Now Sam has to figure out what happened to save Dean from a fate worse than death.
1. I'll Be Damned

N.B.: Most of my stories have been from Dean's or Cass's point of view, so I thought I'd even things up by making one from mostly Sam's point of view. Balance the scales, right?

* * *

 _ **1 – I'll Be Damned**_

For what must have been the millionth time, Sam wondered what it would be like to have a normal life. Of course, it probably didn't help that he was checking his hair in the mirror of a run down bar, trying to see if he had any bits of ghoul in it. This was one of those nights when Dean got a little machete happy.

That also brought back his wish of having a normal brother, and that too was a pipe dream. But did he have any right to even think that? He was the one with iffy psychic powers and the whole demon blood thing. Where did he get off requesting normal from anyone?

He washed some stray blood spatters off his face – they were probably hidden by his hair, so that was a plus – and returned to the bar proper.

It was run down and shabby in a way that many hipster bars tried to emulate but could never quite manage with this level of authenticity. There was Hank Williams on the jukebox and peanut shells on the floor, and it was so dense with shadows there could have been several ghosts here, and they'd be the last to know. It was also the only bar in a place called Fremont, Nevada, a mirage of a town near the California border. Why a few ghouls decided to go on a minor killing spree here was anyone's guess, but it wasn't a problem anymore, as he and Dean had cleared out the nest. Although ghouls nesting was a weird thing. But apocalypse, right? Everything was weird.

How long had he been in the bathroom? Maybe four minutes, tops, but Dean was already chatting up a pretty, dark haired woman at the bar, who body language suggested she was totally into him. How Dean could be a total, transparent lothario and yet still charm women like he was Brad Pitt was beyond Sam. And he absolutely didn't want to be a third wheel while his brother scored. That was just a million kinds of gross and sad.

As it was, Sam was kind of tired, and felt he needed a shower. Decapitating ghouls in graveyards had a tendency to leave him feeling dirty, whether he was or not.

He gulped down the dregs of his beer as the woman laughed at whatever Dean said, and Dean looked at him curiously, flirty smile fading. "You headed out?"

"Yeah. I'm beat." He put down his empty bottle and glanced at the woman, whose eyes were pretty much glued to Dean. She was way hotter than this bar deserved, and it figured she'd gravitate towards Dean, or he'd gravitate towards her. However it went. "Should I take the car?"

Dean nodded, and clapped him on the back. He knew he was giving him time and space to operate, without his little brother in the vicinity. "Why not?" He tossed him the keys, and added needlessly, quietly, "Don't wait up."

Yeah, he already figured that out for himself. Sam draped his coat over his arm (it was still too warm to wear, no matter the fact that it was a quarter to one in the morning), and he left Dean and the hottie flirting back and forth at the bar, like they were the only two people in the world. Must have been nice.

Sam was actually glad to get out in the fresh air, although he still wasn't used to the unseasonable warmth. Since they were essentially on the edge of a desert, you'd think the night would be cold, but nope, not tonight.

It wasn't a long way back to the motel, just a few blocks, and Sam paused in the parking lot and looked up, hoping to see stars. But they seemed faint and hard to see, even though they were far from the light pollution of Las Vegas. Sam felt depression just edging into his thoughts, and he tried to ignore it, but some nights it was harder than others, and this was one of them.

He knew Dean's solution to it was to repress and get massively wasted, and it was great it worked for him. It never worked that way for Sam. Sometimes you could sense the end of the world around the corner, and it was impossible to ignore. It was a weight that threatened to crush him where he stood, and he didn't have Dean's have reflexive denial to help him. He just had to look at it face on, and despair quietly, so no one ever knew.

What he wouldn't give for a time where everything wasn't so fucked up. Or even Dean's ability to pretend doom wasn't falling down right on top of them.

Back in their motel room, he showered away the scent of blood, and went right to bed, even though he considered breaking open Dean's bottle of whiskey or fishing out the emergency beer he kept chilling in the toilet tank. (Did Dean still think he didn't know about that? He'd been doing that since he was a teenager.) But Sam just felt the crushing weight of it all, and knew drinking wouldn't help. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to make it go away. So the soft oblivion of sleep was all he could hope for. He just hoped tonight, he didn't have any nightmares.

When Sam woke up from a relatively dreamless sleep (there was one, involving Lucifer of course, but all he could remember about it was a sense of terrifying dread), he instantly thought something was wrong, but it took him a minute or two to figure out what. He was alone in the small, tacky motel room.

This was a given, of course, as Dean wouldn't bring his conquest back here. But a glance at the room's '70's era alarm clock confirmed he was right to be worried. It was ten thirty. Dean was usually back by now. He usually got out of those places first things. It was like he was allergic to cuddling or something. Afraid a woman would demand he call her tomorrow?

Sam went ahead and took a shower, shaved, brushed his teeth, figuring Dean would come bumbling in the door any second, ruining his peace. But it didn't happen. Huh.

He called him as he packed up, but his call went straight to Dean's voice mail. "Don't tell me you didn't get out of there before her husband came back. Where the hell are you, dude?" He was guessing the woman last night had been married, but she'd definitely been something. Women that pretty usually didn't hang out in bars that divey, unless they had some issues. But he knew Dean would say he had issues, which was true, so they were probably perfect together.

Sam packed up Dean's stuff, which wasn't hard, as he'd hardly unpacked. But he got annoyed as he threw Dean's bag in the car, and called him again. Still he went to voice mail. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Call me."

There was a diner across the street, and Sam went there to get coffee and some breakfast, figuring Dean would join him there. Like he'd ever miss a meal.

But Sam was half way through his egg white omelet when he realized he could ignore it no longer. Something was wrong. Dean should have been back by now, or at least should have called him.

He accessed Dean's phone GPS, and discovered he was about a quarter of a mile away. He hastily finished his breakfast and took off, driving the Impala out there with the intention of throwing him in the trunk if he absolutely had to. It wasn't even noon, and it was topping eighty degrees already. He wanted to get somewhere else, where the sun didn't punish you for existing.

The GPS led him to a wide alley between two shut down shops. The whole street was deserted, as this was apparently the part of town the economic downturn hit the hardest. Were any of the shops on this street open? They didn't seem to be. This was the ghost town portion of Fremont. "Dean?" he said, getting out of the car. His bad feeling from earlier intensified, and he pulled his gun as he cautiously edged up to the alley. A million potential scenarios suddenly sped through his mind, and the first one that jumped out was "she wasn't human". The woman at the bar? Both he and Dean were suckered into thinking she was something she wasn't. And as soon as she got Dean alone …

No. He wasn't going to finish that thought until he absolutely had to. Besides, Dean was basically the Terminator, right? He found a way to fight his way through shit. His brother was a total pain in the ass, but you could never discount his fighting skills. Sam spent much of his childhood alternately in awe of it and terrified of it. Dean could go dark side really fast in a fight.

As far as Sam could tell, the alley was empty, save for a small Dumpster and a few dented trash cans. Sam called Dean's number, and heard the guitar riff of his ringtone. He had a suddenly nauseous feeling he was going to throw open the Dumpster and find Dean's body in it, covered in blood and wounded in some hideous ways, but as he got closer, he realized the sound was coming from under the Dumpster.

Sam took a look inside, just in case, but there was no body in it, just garbage. Crouching down, he did find Dean's cell, kicked under the little bit of clearance afforded by the Dumpster's wheels. He grabbed it and pulled it out, intending to see what the last call from it was – had he realized he was in trouble? – when he saw a bit of a cocktail napkin sticking out of the battery hatch.

Sam took a quick look around to make sure he was still alone before holstering his gun and popping the hatch.

There was a single word scrawled on the napkin, in a messy, rushed hand that was still clearly Dean's writing: _Maldad._

Sam puzzled over that for a second. Was it a mistake? Because as far as he knew, that was the Spanish word for wickedness or malice, and Dean only knew enough Spanish to order tacos or beer. But the word scratched at his memory. It was familiar somehow.

He went back to the car and called Bobby, telling him about Dean's missing status, and the weird word he found hidden in his abandoned phone. "This doesn't sound good," Bobby said, with his usual amount of understatement. "Do you think you can find the woman?"

"Only if she returns to the bar tonight. I'll go quiz the bartender, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the first time she stopped in that place."

"You think it was a deliberate grab?"

Sam nodded out of habit, and spied himself in the rearview mirror. Stupid. "She knew exactly how to catch Dean off guard."

"She knew how to catch men off guard," Bobby corrected. "Dean ain't the only one whose brain flies out his head when he spies a hot woman."

"Yeah. But Dean's not easy to get in a vulnerable spot. If she was a typical monster making a grab, Dean would have come home with blood on his shirt. Somehow he couldn't get away, but he had time to leave a message, knowing I'd get it." This didn't paint a great picture. If he could leave a note, why couldn't Dean get away?

"Could maldad stand for something in particular?"

"What, like a nickname?"

"Yeah." Sam heard noise in the background as Bobby shuffled through some books. "Maybe that's monster shorthand."

Sam suddenly recalled where he heard the name before, and gasped. "Maldad, California. Bobby, it's a town."

"It is? I've never heard of it."

"It's about thirty miles from Stanford. I remember Dean telling me once he was going to take care of something there while Dad was busy hunting wendingos with Jose in the Sierra Nevadas." It was so many years ago now, but it felt like several lifetimes. It was … what, six years ago? Maybe seven.

Bobby snorted. "Gotta better memory than me, kid. I don't remember that at all. Except that whole wendigo thing. Isn't that where Jose lost his finger?"

"I think so. It was also one of the last time I talked to Dean before I went to college." He didn't see Dean again until that night he broke into his place to tell him Dad had gone missing. Sam knew that was mostly his fault.

Considering how many years they'd been each other's constant companions, it was weird to think that there was a time when he and Dean didn't talk to each other. But there had been, and in retrospect, he realized how dickish he was to Dean. But God, the lack of family drama had been like a vacation from life. He had so many good memories from that part of things. He'd almost been like everyone else.

Sam had just been so mad at their father, and he lumped Dean in with him, even though it wasn't fair. He really thought he had a chance at a normal life. If only Dad had told him or Dean about the whole demon blood thing, Sam would have known how pointless that all was. But Dad never told him, and everything played out as the tragedy it was bound to become.

"What's the connection?" Bobby asked, shaking him out of his reverie.

"What?"

"Between Maldad and Fremont?"

That was a very good question. Sam wished he had an answer for him.

* * *

Eight Years Ago

Dean was wondering if he'd oversalted the potatoes when the argument began.

Sam finally broke the news to Dad that he'd applied to and been accepted by Stanford, and Dean knew that was going to go over like a lead balloon. Somehow things had gone from tense quiet to each of them trying to out shout the other at mach speed.

They'd both gotten up from the table and took their fight into the living room, leaving Dean to sit there and finish his meal. He was hungry, so he had a couple of bites, but the food congealed to concrete in his stomach, so he got up and started clearing dishes off the table. It was unlikely they'd be back to eat after this.

Dean was trying to tune out the argument as he scraped the food into the garbage. He had mixed feelings about Sam trying to lead an ordinary life, away from hunting, but ultimately he thought it was for the best. One of them should get a chance at a normal life, right? He'd done his best to keep Sam's childhood intact as much as he could, but he wasn't sure he succeeded. But he knew he didn't want to do this for his entire life, Sam was miserable, and the kindest thing they could do was let him walk away and try to be a civilian. Dean had really hoped their Dad would agree, especially with the recent werewolf fiasco up in Twin Falls. But clearly Dad didn't feel that way.

Dean grabbed a beer from the fridge and shotgunned it as the argument continued. "Don't you dare put that on me," Dad yelled.

"You never gave us a choice!" Sam shouted back. Dean grabbed a second beer and wandered out to the living room, to see how this argument was progressing. He was really glad Mason and Geena weren't here. While it was beyond generous of a hunting couple to let them borrow their place while they were away, it still felt weird to Dean to be back in a house again. He'd gotten used to cheap motels and hunting cabins. "You just assumed we'd want to take part in your obsessed crusade!"

Dean winced at the choice of words, and sat on the couch. "Guys, hey," he snapped, knowing from past experience it wouldn't work. When they were both in high dudgeon, nothing could circumvent them. It didn't stop Dean from trying. "Can we discuss this like fucking adults?"

"You," his Dad snapped, turning his angry eyes on him. "You knew he was doing this, didn't you? Why didn't you stop him?"

Even though Dean still believed it had been the right thing, seeing his Dad furious at him made him cringe inside. He just wanted to make him happy, make him proud of him, but Dean was beginning to think that he might never be good enough for him.

"Leave Dean out of this," Sam exclaimed, stepping into Dad's line of sight. "I am an adult, and I made my choice."

"You're acting like a child," Dad snapped. "You'll be a target if you go out there alone."

Sam scoffed. "Wow, you're full of yourself, aren't you? You figure every monster on the planet knows the Winchester name, and will drop everything and come running to Stanford to take me out? Please."

"Guys," Dean said, once again knowing this was pointless. He really didn't want Sam to go. He'd spent so much of his life looking after him, he didn't know if there actually was a Dean without a Sam. But it was better for Sam, and he wanted to go. If he could actually have a normal life, he should. Dean would manage. He always managed.

"Do you even care about your family, you selfish moron?" Dad replied.

Dean winced at the choice of words. Dad probably regretted it as soon as it was out of his mouth, but there was no taking it back now.

Sam let out a mirthless laugh. "Me, selfish? Coming from you, that's almost a compliment."

"Sammy, don't –" Dean began.

Sam whirled on him, and said, "Don't you dare defend him, Dean."

Dean stared up at Sam, his eyebrow slightly raised. Fury was written across Sammy's face, and it was amazing, but Sam and his Dad didn't look much like each other except when they were mad, and then you could see the resemblance. Same flashing eyes, same twitching jaw muscle of fury. "I think you both need to calm down, and –"

"This is your fault, isn't it?" Dad said, glaring right at Dean. "You encouraged him, didn't you?"

Dean sighed, aware he was letting Dad down yet again. It seemed he'd made his life's mission to disappoint him, even though that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. "He's not happy, Dad. If he doesn't –"

"Happy?" Dad interrupted. His expression betrayed disbelief. "The world's in danger, and you care if some goddamn teenager is happy?"

"Fuck you!" Sam shouted. "I'm an adult, and you're fucking crazy, Dad. This whole crusade of yours? Insane. Three people can't save the world."

Dad openly glowered at Sam, and Dean knew why. Sam had kicked a sore spot. "It's about saving one person at a time, not all at once. And if we can keep another family from going through the hell that we went through –"

Sam was shaking his head, arms crossed over his chest to hide the fact that he was clenching his fists. "Don't you dare throw Mom in my face!"

"You're dishonoring her memory by –"

"She wouldn't want this for us!"

"How the hell do you know what she would've wanted?"

"Would you two please shut up?" Dean snapped. Somehow it felt even weirder having a knock down, drag out family fight in someone else's house. "We can talk about this –"

Dad was now shaking his head. "There's nothing to talk about."

"No, there isn't," Sam agreed, turning and snatching his coat violently from the rack in the corner.

"If you go out that door, don't bother coming back," Dad said.

Sam gave him an icy fuck you sort of look as he shrugged on his jacket, and said, "Fine by me." He slammed the door as he left.

Dean didn't so much sigh as deflate. "I'll go after him –"

"No," Dad said. "He made his choice."

He looked up at him. He didn't mean that, did he? But Dad was giving him that look. The look that said he was about two minutes away from chewing metal and spitting bullets. "But … I thought –"

"How long did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That he was applying to college?"

Dean wasn't sure how to answer that. He wanted to lie, but he also was sure his Dad would see right through it. "A few months."

"A few months. And you didn't think to tell me?"

"No. It was Sam's news to tell. I thought you'd be okay with this. Don't most dads want their kids to go to college?"

Dad stared at him through narrowed eyes. He was clearly trying to calm down, but Dean hadn't seen him this upset in ages. What the fuck had just happened? Dean's mind was still reeling. "We're not most families, Dean. Isn't that obvious?"

"Yeah, but …" he was at a loss. He remembered encouraging Sam to apply to Stanford, even though Sam was afraid he'd never get in. Dean told him the shame wasn't in getting rejected. It was getting knocked down and staying knocked down. If you didn't try, you never knew. Apparently that was the worst advice he could've ever given. He decided to try and appeal to his Dad through logic. He was good with that. "Dad, Sammy isn't like us. He hates this life –"

It was once again the wrong tack to take. "We're a family. We stick together. Do you realize what you've done?"

Dean remained hopelessly confused, and no, it wasn't the beer. There was something missing from this conversation, just like there was something missing in the argument between Dad and Sam, but Sammy was too mad to see it. "Dad, what aren't you telling me? Are we being hunted or something?"

Dad shook his head and turned away, like Dean was the stupidest thing on the planet. "We're hunters, Dean. What we hunt always hunts us back." Dad then stomped out of the room, and judging from the door slam, retreated to the study.

Was that an answer that made any sense? Yes, but also, not really. He'd been hunting with his Dad long enough to know when he was withholding information. There was something he wasn't telling them. Was it about the yellow eyed demon? They hadn't had an even semi-credible rumor about him in ages. Dean sometimes wondered if it was even still alive.

He was too angry to ask right now, but Dean was now certain there was something he wasn't telling them. Why else would he react so violently to Sam wanting to go to college? It was insane.

Dean sat back, and finished his beer. Would his Dad ever tell him what he was hiding? If his past track record was any indication, the answer was no. But he didn't really throw Sammy out of the family, had he? That was even more crazy a thought.

No. They just needed time to cool off, and everything would be fine. Dean gave it a couple days, tops.


	2. City Noise

_**2 – City Noise**_

As soon as the bar opened, Sam returned to question the bartender, but much like he thought, the bartender had never seen that woman before last night. As he recalled, her and Dean seemed pretty friendly as they left, so whatever she pulled on him, it was out of view of witnesses. Which figured, and left Sam back at square one.

But as he sweated in the car, he realized he still had one lead. Maldad. Were they headed there? How far behind them was he? He was on the road when Bobby called him back. "Okay, I found my old notebook from around that time," he began. "And I don't know if any of this is gonna help, but Dean did call me from there."

"You have a hunter's journal, Bobby?"

Bobby snorted. "Hardly. But sometimes I write stuff down that might help in the future. If I remember to do it."

"And Dean called you?"

"Yeah. He asked me about something called the Circle of Cu Roi, and I have a name written down here, but it's not connected to any others. Luisa."

"The Circle of Cu Roi?" That was new to Sam. "What the hell is that?"

"I dunno. The only thing I ever found was a guy in Celtic myth, a sorcerer who could transform himself into various people, but I've found nothing that says he was a real person who existed. I should warn you, in mythology he's seen as something of a trickster."

Sam groaned. "Tell me it isn't."

"Probably not. Just thought I should warn you."

"So the circle would be … what? Sorcerers?"

"Got me, but that makes sense."

"Dean ran into them in Maldad?" First of all, Dean really hated witches, so this would annoy him no end. Secondly, witches could absolutely catch Dean off guard. Magic could get anyone, even if you were prepared for it. That's why it sucked.

Bobby took a moment to think about it. "I think he ran into info about it, but I don't remember him going against them. He probably would have had a lot of trouble if it was more than one of them."

"So Dean fought one member of the Circle?"

Bobby sighed. "I think so."

"Think or know?"

"I barely remember what I had for dinner last week. You're really gonna bust my balls 'cause I can't remember a case from years ago?"

Since he was idling at what seemed to be the longest red light in history, Sam ran a hand through his hair, wondering when the bad feeling in his gut would go away. "No, of course not. I'm just desperate for anything at this point. Did the member he fought happen to be a woman named Luisa?"

"Don't think so. I wrote that down for a different reason, but I'll be damned if I remember what."

"Has anyone else ever reported tangling with the Circle?"

"That's the weirdest thing. No. It was mentioned once, and that was by Dean. I'll ask around, see if the hunters who specialize in witches have ever heard of 'em. Call me back if you find Dean."

"Will do. Thanks, Bobby."

"No problem. Be careful, son. Witches, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." Sam wasn't a big fan of them either. There wasn't a whole lot you could do to protect yourself from magic. Hex bags, maybe a charmed item or two … but he had some ideas.

Sam kind of hoped the Circle had Dean, because he was going to attack them so hard, they'd have no idea what hit them.

* * *

Eight Years Ago

Sam was enjoying some quiet moments in the library, when he looked out the window, and saw something that made his heart plummet to his stomach: the Impala.

He was considering a back way out of here, so he didn't have to fight with his Dad in the parking lot, when he saw Dean sit on the hood and make eyes at a co-ed walking past, pasting on a smile he probably thought was charming. Sam sighed, a bit relieved. It was easier to talk to Dean, although still not ideal. But at least Dad wasn't with him. He knew this, because Dean could never sit on the hood if he was. In fact, as Sam gathered his books and slid them into his bag, he realized that's probably why Dean did it. To let him know Dad wasn't here. Dean may have been Dad's lovesick puppy, but he had these tiny moments of rebellion that gave Sam some hope for him. Maybe someday he'd be his own man.

As soon as Sam entered the lot, Dean boomed a hearty, cheerful, "Hey, Sammy. How you doing?"

He grimaced. "Please stop with the Sammy. I'm not ten anymore."

Dean lifted his hands up, as if surrendering. "Fine. Sam. Is that why you've been dodging my calls?"

Sam shook his head. "I've just had nothing to say."

Dean raised an eyebrow at that, and slid off the hood, so he was standing up. Ironically, this made him shorter. "Really? Where you staying?"

"Don't worry, I'm crashing at someone's place. I'm good."

Dean was starting to get the cold shoulder Sam was giving him. "You're not even gonna tell me?"

"No. 'Cause it'll get back to Dad, and I don't want it to."

Dean cocked his head, and crossed his arms over his chest. "You think I can't keep a secret?"

"I think Dad gets under your skin. I don't blame you, Dean. It's just what happened growing up under his thumb."

His green eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why do I get the feeling I'm being insulted?"

Sam sighed, and shifted his book bag to his other shoulder. "Look, I'm not trying to insult you. It's just I know you've drank the Kool-Aid, and –"

Dean shoved him back, his lips twisting in anger. "What the hell did you say to me?"

"It's not your fault. I know he indoctrinated you young, but-"

Dean shoved him again. "You know how hard it is for me to not hit you right now? You make Dad sound like a fucking cult leader."

"If you look at it a certain way –"

Dean grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, and pulled him in close. He was almost snarling. "Don't you fuckin' dare. I know you're mad at him, but –"

Sam pulled himself away from Dean, finally shoving him back. "Goddamn right I'm mad at him, Dean, and you should be too. Shit, you should be angrier than me. He took your whole childhood away."

"Are you listening to yourself right now? You sound fucking ridiculous."

"Says the guy the monsters call John Winchester's little blunt instrument."

Sam kind of knew he crossed the line, and was prepared for Dean to punch him in the face, which was why it was a surprise Dean went for the rabbit punch to the stomach. He pulled the punch, mostly, but left enough strength in it to make his point. It doubled Sam over and seemed to push most of the air out of his lungs, so it was a smart shot. He didn't expect Dean to be so clinical in an argument. "You stupid piece of shit. I defended you to Dad, you know? I've spent my entire life trying to keep you and Dad from each other's throats. But I'm done. Fuck it. Tear each other to pieces, see if I care."

Sam straightened up, sucking in a lungful of air. Would he ever understand Dean? He just didn't get him at all. He should hate Dad with the force of a thousand suns for what he'd done to him, but he was still his obedient lapdog, desperate for the slightest hint of approval, which Dad withheld like the world's cruelest master. Dean was so massively fucked up it was about a thousand different kinds of sad, and also immensely frustrating. How did he not see it? Instead of having a childhood, Dad molded him into a monster assassin. His proudest childhood accomplishment was hitting ten out of ten targets dead center from fifty yards away with a strange gun and a crossbow. Dean was insanely proud of his ability to hit a target. And why? All it qualified him for was sniper. He was furious at him, but again, the pity he felt for his clueless older brother warred with his impulse to just plant a solid one on his jaw. "I don't need you to fight my battles for me, Dean. You should fight your own."

Dean nodded curtly, getting back in the Impala. Going to storm off like a diva, was he? "Whatever. Good luck with real life, Sammy. Let me know how that goes for you." The passive-aggressive use of Sammy was great. Just what he expected.

"Don't bother calling me. I've dumped that phone." And nothing felt as liberating as putting that phone in a trash can. It felt like a choke chain had finally been pulled off his neck. It was a little terrifying too, but in a good way. No more ties to his dysfunctional Dad and his emotionally damaged brother. He was free.

The driver's side door was still open, but Dean looked at him through the windshield anyway. Sam found his expression hard to interpret, but his eyes were cold. "Fine. You know where I am if you need me."

Sam was so tempted to say 'in Dad's shadow', but resisted, because it was within the realm of possibility Dean would hit him with the car. "You should get your own life, Dean. You don't need to do what he says anymore."

Dean gave him an evil look that still made something in Sam take a step back, even though he knew Dean would never release the full weight of his temper against him. He saved that for the monsters. "He's with Jose in the Sierra Nevadas, tracking down a wendingo. If you wanna go home and get more of your stuff, now's the time."

That was kind of interesting, although Sam imagined it was a roundabout insult. Implying he was too scared to go home and confront Dad. "And you're going to join him, right?"

Dean scoffed. "Nope. Taking care of something in Maldad. See? I'm not Dad's puppet. Maybe you're wrong occasionally, Sammy. That ever occur to you?" Dean slammed the driver's side door before he could respond, then started up the Impala and revved its needlessly loud engine, so if Sam bothered to respond, he couldn't hear him anyway. Again, a nice passive-aggressive touch from Dean. He was generally face forward with his aggression, except those few occasions when he wasn't.

Dean drove off, and Sam wondered if Dean would ever get a life of his own, and if this was the last time he'd see him. Would he be sad in either case? Sam honestly wasn't sure.

But if he was honest with himself, Dean was more of a father to him than Dad ever was, which was bizarre on so many different levels. He was only four years older than him! But he could count on Dean; Dean was always there for him. Sam learned early that wasn't true of Dad. He was there sometimes. You couldn't always count on him. Dean never seemed to notice how weird it was he was always picking up the slack for their Dad. No wonder he had issues.

But he wasn't going to miss the monsters and demons. If he never saw one again, it would be too damn soon.

* * *

Once over the California border, Sam made a pit stop at New Age shop that was actually a secret hunters supplies store. It was run by a middle aged Asian woman who didn't wear enough patchouli to hide the gun oil smell, and was, for some reason, playing NWA over her shop's stereo system. But why not, right?

She let Sam into the back to access the "real" stuff, which she had hidden back there, and when she realized he was putting together a couple of hex bags, offered some suggestions to really "amp" them up. Just in case she'd heard of them, he asked her if she'd ever heard of the Circle before. She hadn't, but Audra (that was her name) said she had heard there was some bad ass coven in California from somewhere overseas, which is why she'd become an expert at amping up hex bags. A bad ass coven? This got worse and worse. What had Dean gotten himself mixed up in now? At least Audra had a few other suggestions, which Sam gladly took. It sounded like he was going to need all the help he could get.

He assembled everything in the parking lot, since it was empty. It was weird to find a secret hunter's shop as the only functioning place in an otherwise abandoned strip mall near a freeway overpass, but it was a decidedly weird world. And despite getting out of Nevada, the sun was just as punishing here too. Which figured somehow.

Sam also made a call while finishing with his hex bombs, and was glad he got his answer two minutes later, when Castiel appeared only a few feet away from him. "What do you mean Dean's been taken by witches?" he said, by way of greeting.

"Uh, just what I said. Have you ever heard of something called the Circle of Cu Roi?"

Cass tilted his head in that extremely Cass way of his, which would have identified him no matter what vessel he was in. "Can't say I have. They're the ones who have taken Dean?"

"All signs point that way. Witches can't affect you, can they?"

Cass shook his head, joining him at the car. "I've never heard of a witch powerful enough to influence an angel."

"Well, that's something." So he had Cass as a weapon going forward. Which was great, because Cass was an excellent weapon, and hard to beat, even in his current disconnected from Heaven state. "The problem is, they could be using Dean as a weapon against us."

That head tilt again. "What do you mean?"

"They'd be stupid to abduct Dean Winchester and not use him as a weapon. I mean, wouldn't you?" In fact, that's what the angels intended, wasn't it? Dean was the Michael sword. That was a weapon.

Cass grimaced faintly, studying one of the hex bags Sam had just put together. "You have a good point. You know this is a curse, yes?"

Sam glanced at the bag in Cass's hand, which was wrapped in red cloth. This was how he kept them separate. The ones in black cloth were defensive; the ones in red were active, offensive ones.

Sam wasn't kidding himself. He wasn't a witch, and he couldn't throw the devastating spells they could, even with a head start. But he could be as annoying as fuck, and between him and Cass, he figured that might just be good enough. No, strike that – it would have to be.

Did the Circle think Dean was the only Winchester they had to worry about? Oh, he was going to teach them a lesson. If they lived long enough to learn it. He'd be perfectly fine if they didn't.

* * *

Dean was too accustomed to waking up disoriented to be alarmed by it, but when he realized he was half naked and strapped down to a table, he thought alarm was probably warranted.

The first thought through his mind was maybe he forgot a safe word, but he had no memory of ever needing a safe word. Also, the room smelled of blood and burned dust, candle wax and rust. He had a very powerful, visceral Hell memory, but he shook it off. This wasn't Hell. (Was it?)

Dean tried to move his arms, but they were held down firmly on either side of him, and he looked to see if he could squirm out of them or maybe pick the locks. It was then he saw his hands were being held down to the table by thick railroad spikes driven through his wrists.

This was a hallucination, right? (Or it was Hell. He was back in Hell.) If there were actually spikes in his wrists, he'd be bleeding out, but there was the barest trickle of blood, and when he moved his hand (minimally), he didn't feel the spikes. Which violated all known laws of physics, unless –

-oh fucking hell. Witches.

The table he was on had a border of black pillar candles, half of them already burned down to nubs, and there was something traced beneath him in what he hoped was red chalk, but was probably blood. He couldn't make out what the symbol was, but it looked pentagram adjacent.

Dean was suddenly aware of a low, barely audible noise, and took a second to identify it as several voices, chanting quietly. He peered into the heavy shadows, and shouted, "Face me, assholes. What, you still scared of me in spite of the fact that you've nailed me to a fucking table?" Although, in retrospect, Dean realized it wasn't a table. It was an altar.

A sacrificial altar.

The chanting began to rise in volume, and he could almost make out the words, but the syllables became slippery, somehow intangible. He was starting to feel lightheaded too. Had they drugged him, or just hit him with a major whammy? It must have been the latter, since he wasn't bleeding to death.

He could just make out people in the Stygian darkness. They were all wearing black veils or hoods over their faces, and they all held knives dripping blood. He looked down at himself, and realized things had been written on his bare chest. No, not written – carved. They'd used the knives to carve symbols and runes, and a couple of them were still actively bleeding.

Oh shit. This was major league black magic, wasn't it? This was the stuff that rebounded and cost you big. The fact that they were willing to do it, even though they'd have to pay a major price for it, indicated they were serious bad asses. They had nothing to lose, because probably about half the people in this room were going to die when they cast this spell.

"You don't want to do this," Dean said, hoping to get a cowardly one to chicken out. If it was a group spell, one weak link might bring it all to a halt. "You're killing yourselves for no reason."

But Dean's heart sank as he felt his consciousness funneling down, like sand in an hourglass. It was too late.

They were doing something to him. And he was afraid it was nothing as peaceful as death.


	3. Burn To Dust

_**3 – Burn To Dust**_

Cass went ahead and went to Maldad to see if he could find Dean and the witches, while Sam decided to drive in, since he imagined he'd need the entire arsenal. It wasn't that far away at any rate.

Bobby called him back when he was about twenty minutes out. "Okay, so, Marcy's heard of the Circle," Bobby said, with no preamble.

"And?"

He sighed heavily. "They're very secretive. They hold themselves apart from other witches and warlocks."

"So they're snobs?"

"Kind of. They're heavily involved in blood magic, and think other kinds are corruptions, dilutions of true magic."

Sam groaned. This just kept getting better and better. Why did Dean ever have to mess with these assholes? But that question answered itself. "They're starting to sound like religious fanatics."

"You're not far off. They worship magic, which they think is a natural but hidden force of the universe, and a dead master warlock called Tenebres."

Sam knew that was the French word for darkness, and didn't think that had ever been a proper name. But if a warlock got full of himself, he might call himself that. Why not just go for broke and call himself Cthulhu, or Merlin? Was Voldemort too recent of an invention? "Did she have any idea how many members there are?"

"That's the only bit of good news. There's unlikely to be more than nine, because they consider nine a sacred number, and they're very selective about who comes in."

"Nine?" Most covens weren't that big. But he'd heard of bigger, so it was simply how you looked at it. "I'm in Southern California. Any magic neutralizing or witch killing artifacts near me?"

"Um, let me see." Sam heard the thump of a heavy book on a desktop, and a ruffling of pages. "Shit. This is gonna take a while."

"Okay. Keep – fuck!" Sam almost swerved the car, and dropped his phone, as he suddenly spied Cass in the passenger seat. Cass, as always, seemed puzzled that he made someone jump.

Sam could hear Bobby on his cell, asking, "What? What happened?"

Sam shot Cass a dirty look – which puzzled him even more – and retrieved his phone. "It's fine. Cass startled me."

He let out a relieved sigh. "We really need to put a bell on him."

"Tell me about it."

"Why would I need a bell?" Cass wondered.

He was eavesdropping now? Bad show. "Hold on a sec," he told Bobby, then glanced at Cass. "What did you find?"

Cass continued to give him that puzzled look, but he let it go for now. Dean clearly took precedence here. "Nothing good. I couldn't find Dean."

"Because of the angel warding on our ribs. Yeah."

"No. It's more than that. Sometimes I can just … sense Dean. People have unique thought patterns, and I know his. In a town as small as Maldad, I should have been able to pick him out."

Well, this was new information. Sam always guessed that angels had some kind of … not telepathy exactly, but they seemed to know when you were lying with far more accuracy than randomness would explain. If Dean knew Cass could see into his thoughts, he'd probably be mortified. Or maybe he already knew, and figured fuck it. Dean often took that attitude with Cass, although not other angels. Cass had his trust. "It might have helped if I could have actually set foot in Maldad."

Sam almost slammed on the brakes, but fought the urge. "What? I thought you just said –"

"I reconnoitered from outside its borders," Cass said. "It's all angel warded."

Sam pulled over. This conversation was just too much. "The entire town?"

Cass nodded. "There's not a single break. Believe me, I looked for one. It's a perfect circle of angel warding."

A perfect circle? Holy shit. A circle again. This coven liked its iconography. Sam put his phone to his ear. "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, and kiddo, I don't wanna tell you this, but I think you should back off."

"And leave Dean to them? No way."

"Son, they knew he had an angel on his side, so they planned ahead and took him off the board. And Cass is the best weapon you got against them."

"Bobby, I don't care. If I was there, Dean would come after me."

"Don't be an idjit. I'm not telling you not to go after him, I'm telling you to cool your jets for a bit. If they prepared for Cass, don't you think they've prepared for you?"

Shit! Bobby was right, of course. In fact, how long had the coven been planning this attack on Dean? Years? They had done their homework, and to assume they hadn't was an invitation to disaster. "Maybe they thought they didn't need to prepare for me," Sam said, knowing as he said it it was ridiculous. "Maybe they considered me negligible."

Bobby scoffed. "It ain't just Dean that's got a rep, and you know it. Dollars to doughnuts, they're ready and waiting to capture you too."

"If you're lucky," Cass said, meeting his eyes. "If you're unlucky, they'll simply kill you on sight."

Oh yes, there was that. Goddamn it. "Then what the hell are we supposed to do? The longer Dean's with them, the worse the odds get that he's still alive."

Bobby let out a grunt of annoyance as he considered their meager options. None of them seemed any damn good at all. "We gotta go after them in a way they won't expect."

"Yeah, that'd be a great trick," Sam said. "What exactly is that?"

He exhaled heavily, and they were both quiet for some time. It was Cass who broke the silence. "I have an idea. But I don't like it."

Now that sounded all kinds of promising. And when Cass told him what it was, Sam hated it too.

But he didn't have any better ideas.

* * *

Eight Years Ago

Dean found himself reflecting on Scanners. Who knew that was a real thing?

Well, maybe that was exaggeration. But the blood was just splattered all over the crime scene, like the vic's body had been a balloon that was over-inflated before exploding. Despite the clean up, you could still see speckles of blood on all the walls, the floor, the ceiling, even the light fixtures. What must it have looked like before anyone made an attempt to clean it?

Dean hadn't even bothered to try the fake badge routine, because he knew he was way too young looking to carry it off. If Dad was here, it was easy to pass Dean off as a baby faced partner, even though most people didn't really buy that. Still, Dad's patter was so strong, most people went along with it anyway. But, since he was on his own, Dean went with sneaking in after hours, under cover of darkness.

As it was, Maldad was kind of a weird town. It was really quiet. Almost preternaturally so. Something was making his hair stand on end every time he was on the street. It was kind of like being in the Stepford Wives, only men were included too. Everybody got a chance to be replaced by a robot.

Dean took photos of anything that might be of interest, and then made to get out of the house the way he came in, through the back. He jimmied open a window in the study, and as it was, he should probably give that a once over before he left. The victim was a college professor, Angela Holcomb, kind of hot in a sexy librarian sort of way, who was somehow "exploded" in a locked room. She had no known enemies, and rumors were already circulating that this was going to be written off as spontaneous human combustion, even though she didn't burn, and that wasn't a thing. (All spontaneous human combustions were related to demons, poltergeists, or witches, in that order. Nothing spontaneous or natural about them.)

Dean was trying to laser focus on this, but part of his mind kept wanting to chew over his earlier fight with Sam, and the whole thing going on between Sammy and Dad. Again, Dad was not telling them something, but Sam was too up his own ass to even see it. And while he resented the fuck out of that snot nosed brat for taking an attitude with him … how much did he blame him, exactly? He fluctuated between a lot and not at all.

Dad had accused him, again and again, of coddling Sam, of being too easy on him, and Dad was probably right. But trying to blame him for Sam's rebellion was crossing a line. Since when was thinking for yourself a bad thing exactly? And Sammy was smart. He could actually go places, do shit. He didn't have to spend his lives in the shadows, hunting down monsters. It would have been nice, Dean always appreciated a second set of eyes on a case, but a hunter's life was ridiculous. And not just in a good way. They died young, they died bloody, and if they were especially unlucky, they became monsters too.

Dean knew this was all he had. He hated school, he was out as soon as he could get out, and he loved hunting these bastards down. He knew the risks, he knew the stupidity he flirted with on a daily basis, but that was okay. He wasn't built for much besides this. If Sammy could do something else, if he could go out and have a civilian life, and maybe live past thirty, shouldn't he fucking try? So what was Dad not saying? Why couldn't Sammy leave?

He tried to get him to 'fess up before he left with Jose, but Dad claimed he wasn't hiding anything. It was a lie, they both seemed to know it was a lie, but Dad was giving him that look. That look that said "don't dig, stop now". Dean hadn't always obeyed it, but it didn't matter. When John Winchester threw up a wall, you were not getting through, end of story. Unless his Dad decided to clear his conscience, Dean was just never going to know. And Sam hadn't worked it out, so why tell him? Let him live in blissful ignorance, thinking Dad didn't want him to go because he was a controlling bastard. That was an easy narrative to swallow, and Sammy already believed it. He thought it was just his thing with Dad. But Dean didn't buy that for a second. It made no sense at all. He was missing a huge chunk of information here. He just wished he was smart enough to work out what.

Dean shook his head and tried to focus, going through the victim's study, looking for anything vaguely demonic. He hadn't picked up a trace of sulfur yet, but his EMF meter wasn't picking up anything either. It was possible the clean up crew accidentally got rid of any sulfur, but he wasn't ready to sign off on that yet.

Angela kept a fairly messy desk, unless it had been ransacked. (Possible.) Dean sifted through them, but they were mostly term papers it seemed, essays of various kinds. He picked up the blotter to look under it, and found a scrap of a yellow legal pad. He picked it up, and read, with light from his Zippo, the words _'Circle of Cu Roi. Find th_ '. It just ended there. The rest of the paper had been torn away.

He hastily flipped the cover on his lighter as headlights skimmed over the walls, bleeding through the study blinds, and he ducked down just in case. While near the floor, Dean saw the metal wastepaper basket beside the desk, and tipped it out, in case he could find the rest of the paper. But most of the balled up refuse in it was the white college ruled kind, until something heavy plopped out. He thought maybe it was a soda can or something like that, but then Dean flipped open his lighter and saw what it actually was.

A hex bag. Wrapped in burlap and twine, redolent of something that smelled an awful lot like charred bones and metal.

"Son of a bitch," he grumbled.

Why did it have to be witches? He fucking hated them. What he wouldn't have given for a good old fashioned poltergeist.

* * *

Sam stopped the Impala a mile outside of Maldad city limits, as he figured any closer would be pushing it. As it turned out, there was a gas station, a remarkably old fashioned kind that didn't even have digitized pumps. He parked off to the side, and he and Cass went around back, out of eye shot of the half-asleep attendant and anyone from the road who might be driving by.

He drew up the summoning circle, and Cass briefly left to get the rest of the ingredients they needed. He was back before Sam even realized he'd gone.

Everything in place, Sam threw the lit match in the brass bowl, and fire flared and died. When it did, Crowley was standing in the center of the devil's trap, incongruously holding a martini glass. It looked like he was wearing the same black suit Sam had last seen him in, but today he was accessorizing with a red silk tie the exact color of fresh blood. "Hello boys," he said, then frowned as he glanced around at their surroundings. "Wait, where's the pretty butch one?"

Oh yeah, Dean would have loved that. "We need a favor."

"No," Cass said, shooting Sam a stern glance. "Not a favor. You must do this."

Crowley smirked. "Oh, must I, feathers?" He sipped his martini, and the more he smiled at Cass, the more Cass frowned.

Actually, Cass was right. Favor was the wrong word to use with Crowley. He'd expect something in exchange, and since he was a crossroads demon, there was only one thing he'd want. "If you want to cage Lucifer, yes," Sam said.

Crowley's eyes scudded towards him, and he still looked almost obscenely amused by all of this. Sam didn't trust him one iota, despite his throwing in with them. He'd only done it out of his own naked ambition. If they won, he expected Crowley to betray them in short order. He was a demon after all, and that's what they did. It was just, right now, it was in his best interest to help them. "Okay, I'll bite. What is this thing then?"

Sam took a deep breath, and wondered if this would sound any better once he said it. "You have to save Dean."

Nope. Still sounded absurd.


	4. Touch Me I'm Sick

_**4 – Touch Me I'm Sick**_

Crowley laughed. Just threw back his head and roared. Sam and Cass waited until he was finished, shooting him evil looks every second.

"Are you done?" Sam asked.

Crowley looked at him, still smiling. "Holy shit, you're serious." He then laughed again.

Cass got impatient first. "We don't have time for this."

Crowley swilled down the rest of his drink, and threw the glass over his shoulder. "Sure we do. Comedy this good should be savored."

Sam sighed, hating this more and more, and gave Crowley the short version of the story: Dean was taken captive by a group called the Circle of Cu Roi, and holed up in a town that was purely angel proof. Crowley was drunkenly grinning through all of this, until he mentioned the Circle, and then his grin collapsed. Suddenly this wasn't funny anymore.

"Those crazy bastards," Crowley said. "Why haven't you wiped them off the map yet?"

Sam glanced at Cass, who shared a portentous look with him. The fact that Crowley knew of them wasn't exactly comforting. "You know them?"

Crowley rolled his eyes, like the question was so beneath him he couldn't believe it was said aloud. "I'm aware of most of the lunatic fringe. They're often my best customers."

"What can you tell us about them?" Cass asked.

Crowley scoffed. "What part of crazy did you not understand?"

"Can you take them on?" Sam asked. He wanted to keep them on topic.

The demon shot him an evil look. "Probably, but I'd rather not. They dabble in some old black magiks, nasty entrails and livers and the whole nine yards splattered everywhere. The only good thing about them is they have a high turnover rate. They die faster than red shirts."

"Shirts aren't alive." Cass replied. "Whatever their color."

Crowley gave Cass the perfect deadpan look for that, so Sam just decided to ignore it and explain it to him later. "So there's probably a small number of them?"

"Oh hell no, they always have a deep bench in the wings. When one goes down, another red shirt's there to take their place. They keep it steady at nine."

"What –" Cass began, and Sam knew he was going to ask about shirts, so he held up his hand to stop him.

"Later." Crowley rolled his eyes and gave him a sympathetic look, which made Sam instantly suspicious. He didn't like having any common ground with Crowley, even if it was simply a pop culture reference Cass didn't understand. "Can you rescue Dean or not?"

Crowley sighed, like the world's most put upon demon. "I suppose. I can throw a little magic if I have to." He could? "But it'd be easier for me to wipe out some of the angel warding and let your fine feathered friend into the battle."

"How about both?" Sam replied. Maybe, if Cass and Crowley could create a grand entrance, Sam could slip in the back.

"And what do I get out of this?"

"I don't smite you," Cass said.

Crowley grinned, showing all his teeth. It was part challenge, part flirting, which made it intensely uncomfortable. "I bet you say that to all the boys."

"You can forever annoy Dean by reminding him of how you had to rescue him that one time." Dean was going to kill him.

But he knew that would work on Crowley, and it did. His eyes seemed bright, as if lit from within. "Ooh, that is good. He'll loathe it." He smiled to himself. "I hate to think I'm a cheap date, but there we are. Shall I get going?"

Sam scraped part of the devil's trap away with his foot, and Crowley was gone before Sam even stopped.

Cass shook his head. "I really hate trusting him."

"So do I. But we don't have a choice, do we?" Now he could only hope Crowley was in time.

If he wasn't, Sam was going to burn that entire fucking town to the ground.

* * *

Crowley tried to remember the last time he encountered any member of the Circle as he walked down the deserted main street of Maldad. Scotland, wasn't it? Nineteenth century maybe? It was funny how time blurred together when it meant absolutely nothing to you. Some punk ass little berk disemboweling sheep and trying to conjure up a massive tidal wave, unaware of how difficult and stupid that was in Scotland. Crowley was pretty sure he killed him for his sheer idiocy alone. He honestly couldn't give a toss about Scotland or sheep.

He had hoped that hysterical Puritans had killed off the Circle, but Puritans seemed to have targeted no actual witches, just women who had the temerity to have opinions or act independently. Humans were so dumb, it was kind of amazing they still existed.

Not that he was about to admit it to the pouty pink giant or his holy Christmas ornament, but the Circle made his skin crawl. Righteousness, bloodthirst, and stupidity were a potent combination, and the Circle had it in spades. He'd run across a few of the damned souls of the Circle in Hell, and they were the ones who giggled through torture. They couldn't get enough. Took all the fun right out of it.

He could feel an oppressive dome of dark magic over the town, like it was trying to squeeze all the oxygen out of the air. What did they do to the plain old humans in this town? Were there any left? Crowley called up a couple of demons, and told them to find vessels in this place if they could. Having extra pairs of eyes in a town like this wasn't a bad thing, and he instructed them to get to the tedious chore of wiping out angel sigils. Like he'd ever chair the clean up committee.

The wellspring of the dark energy seemed to be a church in the center of town, a Catholic one with a high steeple and stained glass windows, that clearly wasn't used for that purpose anymore. He had to give that to the Circle, if nothing else – they knew how to co-opt old symbolism and use it as their own. That was craftsmanship most cults didn't even bother with anymore.

He didn't bother to physically open the door, just gave it a psychic push so it opened before him, and he sauntered inside, prepared to disembowel the first person that looked at him funny.

But he was too late. They were already dead.

Or at least there were six bodies in here, sprawled in the aisle, slumped over the polished wooden pews, face down near the altar. There was no blood, but just from the stench/taste of black magic (a little like slagged aluminum and burnt hair, with just a hint of cumin), Crowley knew they cast a big spell that pulled their life force straight out of them, and shredded their souls like so much confetti. Heavy duty shit. What had these idiots done?

There was a body sprawled spread eagle on the stone altar, and after a second, he realized it was Dean. There was blood and occult symbols carved on his admittedly nice looking torso, along with that damned anti-possession tattoo. He was a massive asshole, yes, but damn if he wasn't easy on the eyes, even bloodied. Some guys got all the luck. "You alive, Winchester? Chopper's leaving, we'd best be on it."

There was no movement, no sarcastic tough guy quip, and suddenly Crowley wasn't sure he was breathing. Did they sacrifice him? Oh shit, Samantha wasn't going to like that at all, and he couldn't see the one winged angel enjoying that either. He was his boyfriend, right?

Crowley had just reached the end of the aisle when Dean finally moved, sitting up slowly, like he was just waking up. He could now read some of the symbols carved on his chest, but no longer bleeding. There were words in Aramaic circling his belly button: marked one. Huh. What was that for?

Dean finally turned to look at him, and said, "Crowley." He said it like he was tasting the syllables, measuring the name, and every alarm bell Crowley still had was going off like the clappers. Dean's energy signature was all wrong too. It was like he had a black aura, a permanent shadow tattooed on his back, and that taste of black magic rolled off him like stink from a landfill. "Demon bitch boy. Working for the angels now, are we?"

Crowley mentally called up his forces, and had them ready. He wasn't going to strike until he knew what he was dealing with, because he knew only one thing right now: he wasn't talking to Dean. "Who are you?"

Dean smiled at him, but it was all wrong. Too much teeth; it was more like a leering snarl. He slipped off the altar, and almost stumbled. Whatever was in Dean was still getting accustomed to using his body. "I am the alpha and the omega. I'm here to protect the world from the likes of you and your holy roller buddies." He kept up that leering snarl, and something was wrong with his eyes. At first, Crowley thought they were simply bloodshot, but the closer Dean – or whatever – stalked towards him, the more he realized that no, they weren't bloodshot. They were bloody. His eyes were filled with blood.

Crowley felt him building up a spell, and lashed out with his own energy, which should have sent the Dean thing flying, but inexplicably he felt power crash against his own mental exertion, and suddenly Crowley was thrown half way across the church. He crashed painfully into a pew, which shattered with the force, and Crowley was genuinely furious to feel pain. He knew if he was mortal his spine would have snapped like a pretzel stick, and that just added to his fury. No one, certainly no human inhabiting whatever the fuck, did that to him.

Crowley threw the first two rows of pews at the Dean thing before he even got up to his feet, and roared, "You do not do that to me!" The stained glass windows shattered under the force of his rage, and he could feel his demons responding, coming to him. He may not have ruled Hell yet, but he had loyal acolytes. He stacked his deck. He was no fool.

Dean was buried under a pile of shattered wood and glass that reached half way to the ceiling, and Crowley started stalking down the red carpeted aisle, ready to beat the fucking thing out of Dean by hand. At first he agreed to help just because it was funny, but now it was fucking personal.

The pile shifted and came down, and Dean emerged from it laughing. A piece of shrapnel had left a diagonal cut across his face, and as Crowley watched, the blood started to form into a ball in mid air as the cut healed over. The small orb of blood was hovering inches over Dean's outstretched hand, and Crowley stopped where he was. What the fuck ..? He could control blood? What the –

-oh, oh no. Oh shit. He suddenly knew who was wearing Dean like a cheap suit.

The guy knew the penny had dropped for him too. He snickered as he closed his hand over the blood sphere. "When that idiot blew open Lucifer's cage, some of the other cages down there blew too. Did you forget to check, Crowley? How sloppy."

"How the bloody fuck is Dean Winchester your chosen one?" That's what he didn't understand about any of this. There was a process, a ritual, and Dean couldn't have taken part in any of that. Not willingly.

The man inside Dean put a hand on his chest, like it was completely his body now. Maybe it was. "Stupid thing thought he was being noble, and took a hit for the girl who was supposed to be my vessel. But improvisation is the soul of genius, don't you think? I mean, he's a thousand times better than that mewling brat."

Castiel folded space right behind him, and made to grab him, but the man sensed the attack as Crowley had, and threw a spell that sent Cass hurtling through the back wall of the church like a wrecking ball. Crowley could have attacked, but didn't. Instead, he immediately jumped to where Cass was, outside on the church's back lawn, which was also a graveyard. Cass took down some headstones on his way to the ground. "We need to go, now," Crowley said, and didn't wait for Cass to say anything. He simply grabbed his arm and folded space, taking them back to the Podunk little gas station where Sam bloody Winchester apparently did his business now, like an upstart pimp too cheap to get a motel room.

Cass yanked his arm away violently, unaware his vessel was bleeding from the temple. "We need to go back, now."

"If you wanna die, sure. Otherwise, we need to get a plan together."

Sam had been waiting for them, seated on the hood of the Impala, drinking a bottled water. He now unfolded his gangly self, and seemed alarmed at their state. "What happened?"

"He ran like a coward," Cass spat.

Crowley glared at him, and wondered what Sam would do if he knifed the angel right now. "I got us out of there before he could trap us. He could too. Why else did your Daddy throw him into Hell in the first place?"

"Whoa, wait. What the fuck are you talking about? Where's Dean?"

Cass wiped the blood off his face with the back of his hand. "We were too late."

Sam's alarm was evident on his face. "Dean's dead?"

"Worse," Crowley said, finding a shred of pity for Dean. That was remarkable. He had no idea he had any pity left. "He's a vessel for the resurrected leader of the Circle."

Sam stared at him, clearly not comprehending this. Bloody humans. "Cu Roi?"

"No. Tenebres. The warlock who once tried to lock the gates of Heaven and Hell both. A real overpowered asshole. And now he has a powerhouse body to go along with all his black magic." Crowley rubbed his eyes. "Fucking hell. When you Winchesters step in it, you go whole hog, don't you?"

"It can't be possible," Castiel exclaimed, angry at Crowley. Like it was his fault! Who opened bloody Lucifer's cage? Wasn't him. "Tenebres's vessel is chosen. There's a ceremony –"

"Dean, in all his wonderful self-loathing, threw himself in front a bullet, not knowing the true cost of what he was taking," Crowley said. He didn't want to yell, but he was still dealing with residual fury at Tenebres. He was going to make that asshole eat his own rectum before he dragged him back to Hell. "See, that's why you don't do things for people. It always comes back to bite you on the arse."

Sam was shaking his head, still not getting this. Crowley wanted to pound it through his big moose head. "Did they burn off his tattoo?"

He scoffed. "Tenebres isn't a demon. He's human; he's always been human. And that's the problem." Sam looked to Cass, who backed him up with a grim nod.

Getting demons out of people? Pieces of cake. Getting a resurrected human soul out of another human? Crowley had never heard of such a thing.

So maybe he was just going to have to kill Dean, and let Heaven have a shit fit about it. Surely there was another Michael sword they could use.


	5. Stop Giving

_**5 – Stop Giving**_

Sam had told Dean that the time at the mental hospital had made him aware of how angry he was. But that wasn't true.

It started when he began drinking demon blood in earnest, although he didn't think that was the cause. It was a symptom.

Sam had been angry for ages. He liked to think he wasn't, he liked to think he was above it, but that was a lie, and he knew it. As a teenager, his father was an easy target for it. When he got older, he tried to channel it towards demons and other monsters. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. He quietly tried some meditation techniques, although the demon blood made it worse and better in equal measure.

Then the fight with Dean, and juicing up to kill Lilith, and Ruby's betrayal, and he was just … done. He became so angry he felt like he was full of broken glass. He thought taking himself off the board for a while would help, but then Lucifer contacted him, and everything went off the rails. Again.

But Sam was sure he could handle it. He wasn't going to lose it, he wasn't going to go all psycho on someone. Okay, so the whole thing at the mental hospital shook him to his foundations, but that was just a blip, right? The culmination of all the shit they'd been through.

Until now.

Sam was so angry he could feel his pulse thumping in his temple. It roared in his ears like a stormy sea at high tide. Cass and Crowley were snapping at each other and he couldn't even hear them. His hands balled into fists so tight his knuckles cracked, and he was clenching his jaw so hard he could feel pain in his molars. His rage was molten, and threatened to spill out. It didn't feel like his body could contain it.

But he had to. He had to concentrate and figure out his next move, and save Dean. Finally, he swallowed it back, and said, "Tenebres was an actual guy?"

Crowley stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "Yes, of course. Haven't you been paying attention?"

"But he was locked in a cage in Hell? And he's still human?"

It was Cass who picked up the story. The funny thing was, Sam knew why Cass was so angry, and he wasn't actually mad at Crowley. He was angry at himself, for failing Dean. Sam knew the feeling all too well. "Tenebres was … a special case. He became so corrupted by black magic his soul was poisoned. Not warped into a demon, but made something infinitely worse. His powers became almost god like. He was too powerful, too evil. Other covens attempted to bind him and kill him, but failed. Eventually, archangels were able to kill him, and he was cast into the pit. He shouldn't have been able to return."

"Lucifer's cage being cracked open blew some other cages as well," Crowley snapped. "The smug bastard told me himself."

His fault. Sam felt it like a punch in the stomach. Crowley may as well have written it in neon on the ground. What was happening to Dean now was all his fault. He really needed something to hit, but he wasn't about to lose his cool. Not yet. "How the hell we do get him out of Dean?"

Cass scowled and looked away. The looking away was what tipped him to the hopelessness of it all. "I don't know."

"You don't," Crowley said. "I know you Winchesters have to have your brother drama thing, but he's gone. You'd be doing him a favor if you just killed him now."

"No," Cass said, giving him his death stare.

"Did you sense him, Cass?" Sam asked. Judging from what he told him earlier if Dean was still in there, Cass should have been able to pick up his thought patterns.

Cass just stared at him, bereft, his blue eyes betraying both anger and sorrow. He didn't say a word, but he didn't have to. The answer was no.

Crowley knew the answer too, and encompassed the both of them in his pissed off stare. "We're wasting time. We need to kill the bastard before we lose him."

Cass rounded on Crowley, all the way back to pure fury. "We are not killing Dean. We can save him."

"How?" Crowley snapped.

"The Circle brought him back, right?" Sam said, finally trusting himself to speak. "Maybe there's a way to send him back too."

Crowley scoffed, throwing his hands in the air. "Yeah, because you know so much about black magic, law school drop out."

Sam glared at him. "I didn't know you were such a coward."

"I'm thinking of self-preservation here, sunshine, and if you were at all smart, you would be too. He could kill us as soon as look at us."

"So why didn't he?"

Crowley's eyes narrowed to deadly slits. He was angry too, but mainly for being dragged into this, if Sam's guess was correct. "Oh, if he has a chance to play with his food first, he's gonna do it. Do you know how many centuries he's been in Hell?"

"Where is Dean?" Sam asked, trying to view this dispassionately, like a logic puzzle. It was the only way he could keep his anger from overwhelming him. Did everybody think Dean was the only one with a temper? That was because Sam was happy to let everyone think Dean was the hothead, the loose cannon capable of snapping and sending everything into chaos. While Dean could do that, he was actually a bit more tactically minded than that most of the time. Sam knew, if he just let go, he could do so much more damage than Dean ever could. But a different kind of damage. He'd been corrupted by demon blood. It didn't exactly make you a harmless kitten.

"Haven't you been listening to us, you great moose?" Crowley said. "He's –"

"You mean metaphysically?" Cass interrupted, getting on his wavelength. Sam nodded, and Cass considered it a moment. "One soul can't eject another. Even Tenebres's poisoned soul can't do that."

"So he's what, asleep in his own body?"

"Something like that."

"Can we reach him?" Sam wondered. If they could get Dean fighting from the inside, that wasn't nothing.

Cass started shaking his head, but made himself stop. "I don't know."

"Even if Dean was awake, that doesn't help," Crowley said. "There's nothing he can do to make Tenebres leave. I don't care that he is Dean bloody Winchester. He's stuck where he is, and making him conscious of it will only make it worse for him. Do you really want your brother to suffer like that?"

Sam was starting to feel icily calm. This was both good and bad, but right now, mostly good. He almost had a plan. "He can distract Tenebres. If he puts him off for even one second, that's a second we can use."

Crowley scoffed. "To do what? Archangels had to get him last time. You got any on speed dial?"

Sam looked at Cass, and he didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Cass raised his eyebrows, and said, "Sam, even if I knew where to find him, he wouldn't help us. He doesn't do things like that."

"He's your brother, Cass. Do you think he wants Tenebres walking around the Earth?"

Crowley looked between them, no longer angry, just intensely curious. "Hold the bloody phone. You know an archangel who will still talk to you?"

Cass frowned at that. "Not … exactly. Sam, he won't do this."

"Fine. If he won't, he won't. But we should at least ask, don't you think?"

Cass didn't like it, but Sam felt his rage start to even out. He was starting to have a plan, and that was good. A deliberate target was better than a random one.

Crowley was still looking between them, waiting for an answer. "We may know someone, but he'll be a hostile participant at best," Sam admitted. "You said you know some magic, right? I don't care how powerful Tenebres is, he has to have a weakness. We can attack him that way."

"We?" Crowley repeated. "I didn't sign up for front line duty. I want the guy back where he belongs, but I'm not taking a bullet for the Winchesters."

Sam wasn't an idiot. He knew some spells, but he was in no way equipped to take on an experienced, natural warlock. But he didn't have to be. He just had to be ready to move when a weakness was revealed. Even if he only got one good shot, it wouldn't matter as long as it was the last. "Other witches tried and failed to stop him, and they're all in Hell, right? How many of them want revenge?"

Sam saw the second Crowley clicked onto his plan in his eyes. He chuckled, but it was kind of mirthless. "That is fucking dark. Kudos, Moose. I thought you were one of the good guys."

He decided to ignore that remark. "Can you control them?"

Crowley had to think about it for a moment. "I think I can get some of them on board. But you know, you are releasing demons who are talented with high level witchcraft on the world. They'll hardly want to go back."

"Let me deal with that."

"Sam," Cass said warningly.

He met his gaze fearlessly. "It's Dean. We're bringing him back."

Cass wasn't going to argue with him, even though he probably knew he should. If this happened to Sam, Dean would have moved heaven and earth to get him back, and he was going to do no less. "We have to assume the Circle will follow him. Will they increase his powers?"

"At his level?" Crowley shook his head. "He's already maxed out. They're just background noise."

Sam felt the plan coming together now in his head. He could see it like a chessboard, only the pieces were genuine monsters, ready to rip into the first thing they saw. "So they're just cannon fodder. Must be nice to have a bunch of followers ready to throw themselves into the jaws of an attacker in your stead."

Crowley nodded. "It's one of the great perks of the job."

Cass grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him back, mostly out of Crowley's earshot. "This is dangerous. I know Tenebres is even more of a threat, but if we get ourselves killed in the process of trying to bring Dean back, I don't think he's going to be pleased."

Sam nodded. "Probably not. But at least he'd be back to bitch about it."

Now all Sam needed to do was figure out how Dean ended up a designated sacrifice of the Circle. Weirdly enough, that was probably going to be the hardest part of all of this.

* * *

While Crowley went to see which members of covens Tenebres had wiped out were willing to join up for a possible suicide mission, Sam and Cass found a perfectly decent, boarded up business that was still partially under construction, but empty for now. The walls, floor, and roof were intact, so it gave them cover for the summoning ritual. Cass warned him several times that it might not work, that it was very dependent on his mood, but Sam had faith that Cass would pull it off. Again, this was Dean on the line. He expected him to pull out all the stops.

Ritual complete, they waited. At the three minute mark, he realized they were probably going to have to come up with a plan B. That sucked, because there wasn't a lot you could substitute for an archangel.

But then Cass whirled around, as if alarmed, and Sam turned to find Gabriel (whom he still thought of as the Trickster first) standing on the half completed staircase, looking down at them. "Seriously? I want to applaud the balls, little bro, but I think maybe you've just been with these apes too long."

Cass let that all roll off his back. "We need your help."

"I've known that for ages," Gabriel said, smiling smugly. "But I think I've already done my good deeds for the century." His eyes passed over Sam, and seemed to look through the rest of the empty structure. "Where's the grumpy one? If you're gonna try that holy oil thing on me again, you can save it. You know the old saying. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you're still fucking assholes."

"Tenebres is back on Earth," Cass said. "And he's inhabiting Dean."

Gabriel's eyebrows rose, and he looked between them like he thought they might be joking. "Wow. Sucks for you. Well, on the bright side, the world will end without the Apocalypse. Congrats, Winchesters, you did it." Gabriel gave Sam the most sarcastic thumb's up he had ever seen.

And Sam thought his older brother was bad. Gabriel really took the cake. "We have a plan to throw him back into Hell, but we need the help of an archangel."

Gabriel smiled, and made an amused noise. "I know you do. Why not call Raphael? Or hey, maybe Michael will do you a solid, since Dean is supposed to be his. He's not one to share."

Cass frowned. "You know why not."

"Brother, seriously, give it up. I know your heart's in the … well, not right place, just a place. But the Apocalypse is happening, and nothing you or I or a couple of jumped up primates with attitude problems can do will stop it. So stop fighting the inevitable and go home. Michael's always had a soft spot for you. If you just apologize I'm sure he won't bench you for too long –"

"Gabriel," Cass interrupted sharply. "Please." Just from the grim look on his face, Sam knew saying that was just this side of agony for Cass.

What exactly was it like being one of a bunch of angels? Were they all related? That was the general take away, but he didn't really see how that was possible. But then again, he was thinking like an Earth bound creature, and angels were far from that. Could energy beings actually be related to one another in a human sense? Every time he tried to wrap his head around these questions, he just ended up with more questions, and a mother of a headache.

Something very weird happened. The smug expression seemed to melt from Gabriel's face, and he stared at Cass intently. This went on for several seconds, and slowly Sam realized they were still having a conversation, but he was completely left out of it. If not exactly angel radio, it was angel telepathy or something like that. It felt weird to just stand there like the other life form he was, but he had no choice.

Almost a solid minute went by before Gabriel shook his head. "Dean? Really? I mean, bro. _Dean_? I mean, of the entire world, why – yeah, yeah. I still don't get it at all." Sam kind of wondered what that was about, but he had a suspicion or two. "I don't do things for Heaven anymore, okay? I'm done. You know that."

Now Cass went back to talking aloud too. "This isn't for Heaven. It's not even for Earth. It's for me."

"Way to throw the guilt lever, Cass. You really have been among Humans too long."

"Considering what you did to me last time we met, I feel I'm owed."

He rolled his eyes like a bratty teenager. "Oh come on. I could have sent you to some way worse places. The second one was even on Earth."

The last time they'd encountered Gabriel, he'd stuck him and Dean in TV show hell. Cass tried to save them a couple of times, and got sent away before he could do anything, which was the tip off that Gabriel wasn't actually a Trickster but an angel. (Archangel, as it turned out.) Cass actually never told them where Gabriel has sent him, but he looked a little ruffled and unkempt each time. It sounded like he had a lot of fun too. "I am not asking you to help me stop the Apocalypse."

"Can't be done."

"I'm asking you to help me stop Tenebres."

"Cass, I'm not –"

"If you want the Apocalypse to happen, we have to stop him first," Cass insisted. "Even you can see that."

Gabriel gave Cass a look that Sam would have called pitying, except there was something else in it. Regret maybe? "Not my fight, little brother." And then, Gabriel was simply gone.

Cass threw his hands up in the air in frustration. "Damn it."

"You tried. Thank you."

He ran a hand a through his hair, and Sam saw his jaw tense. He was really, genuinely upset. He wondered about the conservation he and Gabriel had that he was completely left out of, and what Cass had told him. Must have been something heavy. "I could appeal to Heaven," he said. "He's right. Michael won't stand for Dean being taken from him."

"No. What are the odds you even live through that?"

"He won't kill me." He paused briefly. "Probably. He'll most likely just lock me up for a while, send me on for discipline."

"Discipline?" Sam honestly didn't know what was more alarming: that Heaven actually had that monstrous sounding shit, or that Cass was genuinely considering it. "No. We'll find another way. We're not that desperate yet."

But Sam may have spoken too soon. He thought he heard something, but he just wrote it off as road noise, until they stepped outside, and he could see, on the horizon, a collection of dense black clouds swirling into a large black disc over what must have been Maldad. The winds were picking up, and the clouds were expanding outward and downward. It wasn't quite a funnel, not quite a tornado, but it looked like it was going that way. And it was going to be massive.

He almost asked Cass if this was Tenebres's doing, but of course it was. How common were hurricanes in Southern California? But it was really unsettling to know that Tenebres was so powerful, he could control weather. That was definitely god level shit.

A question that had been gnawing at his mind since his first conversation with Crowley and Cass came back to him. Sam was actually afraid to ask, but he felt he had no choice. "Is he hurting Dean?"

Cass took too long to respond to that. Sam's stomach had knotted into a fist before he replied. "I don't know. Black magic is corruptive. The sooner we get him out of Dean, the better."

That's exactly what he thought. So they needed to move fast, despite the lack of an Archangel.

Sam was going to kill that son of a bitch and save his brother. He just had to figure out exactly how.

* * *

Dean was dozing in the back seat of the Impala when something woke him up.

He wasn't sure what. He rubbed his eyes, and realized his body felt kind of strange. Like it had all fallen asleep, and he had that warm, lethargic feeling in all his muscles. It was better than waking up with a crick in his neck, but it was still very weird.

"I don't have much time," Cass said, startling him. He was in the front seat, looking back at him. "As soon as he senses me he'll shut me out."

Dean pushed himself up to a sitting position, aware his arms were still numb, and unsure if Cass should be here. Wasn't this the time before he met Cass? Wait a minute – what time was this? What was the last thing he remembered? "Who will shut you out? What's going on?"

"Tenebres. He's taken over your body. He's a warlock."

"Excuse me?" This was a dream, right? A fucking weird one. Except … hold on a minute. Tenebres? Why did that name mean something to him?'

"Sam wanted me to ask you what you did in Maldad eight years ago," Cass went on, his tone and expression equally urgent. "What happened?"

Oh shit. Now Dean remembered everything. He was nailed down to that altar, and he thought he was being sacrificed. And he was, just not in the way that he expected. "I don't understand. What does it matter what I did in Maldad? I killed a witch."

"And got yourself marked as Tenebres's vessel. How?"

"I did?" This was news to him.

But it figured, didn't it? He only had himself to blame for his own doom. Awesome.


	6. Dig

_**6 – Dig**_

Eight Years Ago

It took Dean way more time than it should have to convince Professor Holcomb's best friend that he was a junior agent, but eventually she bought his bullshit and allowed him to interview her about the Professor. At least it gave him a lead.

Angela had a niece, Luisa Santiago, who had gone missing a few days ago. The police thought she'd run away (she was fourteen), but Angela's sister – and Angela in turn – thought Luisa might have been lured into a cult of some sort. She only knew of it as the "Circle", and the friend thought maybe it was a Scientology thing. But Angela was afraid it was worse than that.

She was right, of course, and that's what got her killed. Angela had somehow sniffed out the Circle, and they destroyed her as a result. Dean had to figure he was working on borrowed time, since he was now aware of them too.

With Bobby's help, he found out what little there was to know about this Circle, and the fact that the last call Angela made was to a man named Lloyd Mercer. Dean had asked the friend, but she'd never heard that name before.

Dean found an address for the guy. He only lived three miles from the Professor's house. Mercer lived in a cozy little split level in a quiet suburb, and for some reason Dean felt endlessly creeped out about it. Either he was a regular guy, or he was an evil guy hiding in plain sight, which was something of an evil guy thing. He would have given anything for an evil guy who liked in a crumbling castle or a mausoleum or something. Someone who seemed as evil as they were.

He knocked on the door, even though there wasn't a car in the driveway, and confirmed the guy wasn't home or wasn't answering the door. Should he break in and snoop? He considered that as he walked around the house, climbing over a locked gate to get into the fenced backyard. And that's where he discovered his answer.

The backyard was tiny, with a rotting bike shed tucked near the back fence, and the rest of it given over to a plastic covered garden, which Dean peeked into. What he saw was a garden fit for a witch: Wolfsbane, trumpet flower, snakeweed, palma Christi, foxglove, wormwood, tansy, mugwort, and that was just the stuff he could identify. Near the back door was a box, and inside it he found mushrooms, mostly redcaps. This was a gardener witch. Must have made it easier to get what he needed for spells. There was also some kind of symbol drawn on the inside cover, but he didn't recognize it. Looked super witchy, though.

He picked the lock on the back door and walked in to what seemed to be a darkened, quiet house. He was almost through the kitchen when he heard a noise.

Dean couldn't immediately identify it, but it alarmed him, and he pulled out his gun and eased off the safety as he crept into the hallway. Listening hard, he heard the noise again. Kind of a thump. The deeper he ventured into the house, the more he could smell that weird metal odor he'd also encountered in the hex bag he pulled out of the Professor's garbage can. Mercer had just gone from suspect to definite killer. What was that?

The thumping had stopped, but Dean had guessed it to be coming from what looked like a bedroom. Gun ready, he opened the door as quietly and slowly as possible, glad he decided to keep a protective hex bag in his pocket. Honestly, it would be of little use against a powerful witch, but Bobby was insistent he use it "just in case". And if Bobby was going to be that way, fine. Bobby had been a hunter longer than him (although not by much – the benefit of starting very young).

The bedroom was neat and very generic, with nothing capable of making that thumping noise instantly apparent. There was a closet, which he checked, but it was just full of clothes. Except, when he moved some aside, he found, hung up on the back wall, an assortment of machetes and knives, and what looked like a cairn made of tiny bones on the floor, hidden behind a pair of boots. He sincerely hoped they were bird or small animal bones, and not baby bones. But they were baby bones, weren't they? Christ. Couldn't be a hippy-dippy witch, but a full on, disembowel your dog black magician. Fuck, he hated those most of all. Dean just hoped those were bones dug up from a graveyard, and not ones he harvested himself by hand.

The last door opened on a bathroom, and the opaque shower curtain, adorned with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, was pulled shut around the bathtub. He got a queasy feeling in his stomach and crept forward, gun still leading the way. He was going to pull back the curtain and there was going to be something behind it, wasn't there? He hated those scenes in horror movies! They always seemed so cheesy, but in real life it just sucked. Still, the first thing that jumped out at him was going to get a hollow point in the face, so he wanted to see Norman Bates recover from that. Checkmate, bitch.

Dean steeled himself, finger on the trigger, and yanked the curtain aside. Nothing jumped out at him, but he was right: there was something in the bathtub. It was a teenage girl, stripped to her underwear, bleeding from several symbols carved onto her body, hogtied by what looked like bike cables to the tub's built in safety railings. She had a gag in her mouth, and tears had made mascara run down her face like oily tears. She looked up at him, eyes wide and alarmed, and cringed back as much as she could. But she couldn't much. She was restrained well.

"Shit. Luisa?" he guessed, holstering his gun and reaching for his good hunting knife. It might cut through bike cables. It was worth a shot. She nodded, making a noise muffled by the gag, and while she looked slightly less alarmed, tears were still falling from her eyes, and she cringed again as soon as she saw his knife. It made Dean instantly furious. What did this sick fuck do to her? He was going to fucking kill him. Strangle him with his own intestines if he could manage it. "It's okay, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm here to rescue you." Before attempting to cut her free, he undid the gag and slipped it off her.

"He's a fucking psycho," she said, her voice cracked and dry. "He was talking about sacrificing me to something, and that I was chosen for … something. I dunno, he's fucking crazy."

"That he is." Dean cut through half the bike cables easily, but the inner core was giving him trouble. He really had to put some muscle into it. He got a look at some of the symbols carved into her skin this close, and he recognized a couple of them as truly bad mojo. At least one looked like some kind of possession sigil. What was he planning to do to her? Even though he hadn't touched her, his hands were already slippery with her blood. The tub was red with it. He had to wipe his hands on his jeans to gain more leverage with the knife.

She screamed then, a piercing noise that made him wince, and he turned to see that Lloyd had returned, and threw a knife at him. No, correction – he threw it at Luisa. So Dean did the only thing he could do. He jumped up to his feet, and took the blade for her.

It thunked into his stomach, near his right hip, and holy fucking God did it hurt. There was also a weird feeling, like a lightning bolt of ice passed through him, but it faded almost the second he was aware of it. Lloyd was shouting something too, something in Latin by the sound of it (a spell?), but Dean was all reflex now, and threw the knife he'd been using to cut through the cables.

Lloyd stopped spell slinging abruptly, as the knife had sunk hilt deep into his left eye socket. "Cast that spell now, Gandalf," Dean said, as Lloyd wavered on his feet before crashing to the floor. In this small a distance, there was no fucking way Dean was going to miss. Lloyd really should have thrown the knife deliberately at him in the first place. He might have had a chance.

Dean reached down and pulled the knife out of his gut. It was weird. It wasn't metal; it was made of some dark stone, with more symbols carved into it. Ceremonial? Maybe he was coming to finish whatever sacrifice ritual he'd begun on Luisa. He hoped whatever demon god he was into loved snacking on Lloyd's soul instead.

It hurt like fuck, of course, and Dean could feel warm blood already running down his leg, but it was more a trickle than a gush, and he was pretty sure it was a lucky hit, and didn't get anything major. He used a nearby towel to wipe his fingerprints off the blade before dropping it in the sink, and went to retrieve his own knife from Lloyd's head. He was very dead, and when Dean yanked out the blade, it had brain matter still on the end. He flicked it towards the sink, and went back to work cutting Luisa free. "Are you all right?" she asked. She barely had any voice at all now. Pretty dehydrated. How long had she been left here? "Is he ..?"

"Not gonna bother you again." Finally he managed to get through one of the cables. He still had to wipe the blood off his hands.

Once she was free, he found a roll of duct tape in the bedroom (he'd see it in the closet), and taped a hand towel to the stab wound, just to soak up the blood until he could get back to the motel. Luisa couldn't find her clothes, but put on an oversized t-shirt and Dean stole a coat from Lloyd's closet that effectively covered her up. "Who the hell are you?" she asked, as she followed him out, watching him wipe his fingerprints off the few doorknobs he touched.

"If I told you, you'd think I was crazy," he said, tossing the towel in the backyard. It was easy to unlatch the gate from here – still not leaving prints – and walk out. He made sure they stuck to the shadows, taking a shortcut that put them on a neighboring road. Being seen leaving would be just as bad as leaving prints.

"I was almost sacrificed by a freakazoid," she replied. "And I'm leaving with the man who just killed him in front of me. I think everything's crazy right now."

Fair enough. She seemed like a tough cookie, and that was good, because it would help. "I'm a monster hunter."

"Of course you are," she said wearily. But she didn't say anything else until they were back at the Impala. He gave her a bottle of water from the trunk (with a little holy water in it – had to be sure), and she asked, "What was he? What kinda monster?"

"He was a witch." Male witches weren't actually called witches, but fuck it. Dean was calling them all witches.

She drank the holy water without noticing it, which was good. Whatever was supposed to possess her hadn't gotten to her yet. He noticed fresh blood was making the t-shirt cling to her, discoloring it a dark shade of red. She needed a hospital, and he didn't dare take her to one. "So witches are real?"

"A lot of bad things are real. Sorry."

She sighed and slumped against the door, and by the time Dean had started the car and got them on the road, she was crying softly. He wanted to tell her something comforting, but he didn't know what to say.

Dean remembered a friend of his Dad's, a veterinarian named Shelby who worked about thirty miles out. Although she generally worked on animals, she had a back room in her clinic where she sometimes patched up hunters, as her family had a long legacy of them. Upon seeing Dean's knife wound and Luisa's many carved sigils, she smacked Dean hard on the shoulder, and said, "You stupid fucker, you need a hospital!" But even she knew the uncomfortable and unanswerable questions that would be asked, and with a sigh shot Dean up with a painkiller that made him feel loads better. Also, as far as she could tell, the knife hadn't done any major damage, so after getting a local he stitched himself up while Shelby worked on Luisa.

Sewed up and happily high, he called Bobby to let him know the case was at least partially closed. Bobby called him an idjit when he found out he got stabbed, and Dean was high enough to laugh at it. He felt really good. Better than before he got stabbed. He really had to ask Shelby what she gave him.

But he'd barely finished talking to Bobby before his phone rang, and to his surprise it was Dad. Reception was kind of shit, but Dad told him Jose had gotten injured, and there was more than one wendigo out there, so he wanted him to come to Jose's hunting cabin and join him in the hunt. Normally Dean would have been thrilled, but he felt kind of bad for leaving Luisa in such shitty shape. Still, he told his Dad he'd be there ASAP, before the signal dropped out.

Was he even sober enough to drive? He gulped down a cup of Shelby's coffee, which tasted like used motor oil, but had enough caffeine in it to kill a squirrel. It would have to do.

He talked to Shelby for a bit. She fixed Luisa up as much as she could, but some of that shit carved into her might leave scars. Fucking witches. Dean hated telling Shelby he had to leave Luisa with her, but she understood that John wanted his help. Dean didn't know about the relationship between Shelby and his Dad. She was a few years older than John, and he had an impression that Dad knew her family, but he wasn't completely sure how. Like many of Dad's contacts, he didn't explain the relationship. You were just supposed to accept it at face value. It was kind of annoying, but right now, a gift. She did say she thought Dean should at least get some rest before heading out to the Sierra Nevadas, because he had just been stabbed, but he figured he was fine. Thanks to the painkillers, it barely hurt, and he felt no more tired than usual. As far as he was concerned, that was good to go.

He went to say goodbye to Luisa, so she didn't think he was just dumping her here and running off (although that was exactly what he was doing). Hunched up on a chair, huddled in a blanket, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea, she looked younger than fourteen; maybe twelve. And so pale. Shelby said the blood loss wasn't too bad, but any blood loss was pretty shitty. Most of the marks carved into her weren't too deep, and most were reasonably fresh, but still, bad all the way around. Essentially she had been tortured, and was probably only a few minutes away from murdered when he arrived.

Dean knelt down in front of her and told her he had to go, but Shelby would take care of her until she could rejoin her family. She put down her cup of tea and grabbed his hand, and started panicking a little about what she would do if there were more witches, if they came after her. She hadn't seen anyone, but Lloyd had definitely been talking to someone on the phone.

He pulled the hex bag out of his coat pocket and gave it to her, telling her to keep it on her at all times. It wouldn't protect her from every bit of magic on the planet, but it would protect her from most. He also recommended a folklore book that was mostly truthful about witches and a few other creatures. Dean wanted her to read up and learn about them, because knowledge was power, and she needed desperately to get some of her own power back. Sometimes, as a thought experiment, he'd try and imagine how terrifying this paranormal shit was when you first encountered it and had no idea it existed before. He honestly couldn't. He'd been surrounded by it all his life, and couldn't imagine not knowing it. It must have been one of the worst feelings in the world.

She didn't so much hug him as cling to him fiercely, and for a moment he started to wonder if he was going to have peel her arms off of him before she inadvertently choked him. But eventually Luisa did let him go, and when he was half way out the door, she said, "Hey. You never told me your name."

He hadn't? Holy shit, with everything going on, he forgot. "It's Dean," he said, and gave her a slight wave as he left.

Shit. What was her life going to be like now? He hoped she got years of therapy. He'd said it a thousand times, but he could never say it enough: goddamn motherfucking witches.

* * *

"It wasn't a big deal, it –" Dean started to say, still not completely sure what was going on. This was a dream, right? Had to be. Except he had a sinking feeling it wasn't.

"I know," Cass interrupted. "I just saw the memory."

That took Dean aback. "You saw it?"

"We're in your mind."

"Oh." Sure, yeah, okay. How did that make sense? "You're dream walking."

Cass nodded. "Essentially Tenebres is keeping you unconscious while he has your body."

"How can I get him out of me?"

Just the way he grimaced, Dean knew he was fucked. "You can't. You may be able to distract him but I'm –"

Suddenly, Cass just winked out of existence, and Dean was alone in the car. Dean was sure it wasn't one of his abrupt teleportations either, because Cass wasn't the best at social graces, but he'd never leave mid-sentence. "Oh you motherfucker," Dean said, pushing open the door and getting out of the car.

He was on a road. It could have been any back road he'd ever been on, as it was long and anonymous, with a few patches of trees and grass on either side. Could have been Oregon, could have Massachusetts, could have been someplace else. Didn't really matter. "You want me, asshole? Come get me!"

Except, of course, he was wrong. Tenebres already had him. He didn't need to do shit. The game was over, and the motherfucker had won. So what was he supposed to do?

Dean leaned against the car, and thought about it for a second. He could destroy shit, but if it was only in his mind, would it make any difference? He had to get Tenebres's attention. But how? What could he dream up that would unsettle a fucking warlock?

Dean realized there was nothing he had that would do anything. He was stuck. Except …

How did Tenebres feel about Hell? Dean knew he didn't enjoy it. He buried as many of the memories as he possibly could, because he couldn't bear them. Just thinking of the idea of them made Dean cringe.

As he stood there, the road melted away to fiery lava and gaping abysses full of dark and hungry things, and quiet breezes gave way to a chorus of endless screams. Dean went deep into his own mind, into one of his dark places where he never went, out of the fear that he simply couldn't handle it. That way led madness. And maybe madness was the only thing that could save him.

"You want me, asshat? Fine. You're getting it all."

There was no steeling himself for this. Nothing could prepare him or make it better. He was just going to have to bear it, and hope there was an other side, a place where he wasn't crazy and he could handle this.

Dean found the place where he buried all his worst memories, all those years in Hell, and opened the door.


	7. Locust

_**7 – Locust**_

Sam took a moment to sit and have a drink of water (he wanted beer, but he wasn't having one yet), and suddenly Cass was beside him, because he was doing that today. Sam was proud of himself for not jumping.

"This may hurt," Cass said, and touched his forehead.

It was like a small bomb went off inside his head. There were images and words and colors and sensation blasting through his brain, and he really thought his brains might have been leaking out of his ears. It lasted for a few seconds that felt like an eternity.

He tried to say something, but all that managed to come out was a strangled noise. Sam held his head in his hands like he thought it might break, but once the pain started to ebb, he suddenly remembered being in Maldad eight years ago. Which was crazy, because he had never been there before. And yet he had very clear and painful memories of saving a girl from a witch. But … wait a second.

It was Dean's memory. Somehow he had Dean's memory. "What the fuck ..?"

"It was faster than telling you," Cass said, as if that somehow made it better.

Sam sat up, brain still intact but mind reasonably blown. Dean had never told him any of this. He never told him he was stabbed, or that he pulled a mutilated fourteen year old out of a bathtub, or killed a warlock with a thrown knife. When Sam asked him what he'd done while he was in college, Dean had shrugged and said, _"The usual."_ How was that the usual?

"It was the knife," Cass said.

It took Sam a moment to process that. "The one he was stabbed with?"

Cass nodded. "It was cursed. That cold sensation he felt as he took the knife was his soul being marked. That's probably why the Circle never pursued him. He was their vessel if Tenebres ever returned."

"If we could unmark his soul, would it make any difference?"

"Not now, no."

This was such a weird feeling. He had never actually been in Dean's head before, and he thought it would be really … well, maybe frightening was the best way to put it. But it was kind of sad. He expected the impressive part. Dean just put his head down and did the job, no matter the job. Did Dad even know Dean had shown up for the wendigo hunt with a fresh knife wound? Because Sam knew one thing for sure: Dean never told him. Far be it for him to complain to Dad, even when it was for his own good. Especially when it was for his own good. Dean usually considered himself an afterthought in any situation. Talk about needing therapy.

Sam had not thought of Shelby for ages. She always smelled vaguely of antiseptic, but Sam remembered liking her. She'd died in a car accident six years ago. It was a sad reminder that even regular old mortality could take out a hunter (or the hunter adjacent). "He never even told me he killed someone," Sam admitted, still stunned by this.

"It was self-defense," Cass said. It was almost amusing how fast he jumped to defend Dean.

"I know. It's just … wow, you'd think that would be something he'd tell me." Sam had reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone before he was even aware he'd done it. He called Bobby, and filled him in on the particulars.

When Sam got to the girl, he gasped. "Luisa Santiago?"

"You know her?"

Bobby scoffed. "She's a hunter. I think she's working a werewolf case in San Diego right now."

Somehow that figured. Her way of coping with her trauma was to be proactive. Good for her. "At least she's still alive. Do we know why she was chosen?"

"No, but goin' on past instances of similar shit, I'm guessin' bloodline."

That was just what Sam thought. And since they had angel vessel bloodlines, Dean was probably perfect for Tenebres. Damn it.

Bobby must have guessed the reason for his silence, because he tried to fill it with some positivity. "That knife you described, that's something I can look into."

"Cass said it wouldn't help."

"Not that object, no, but one cursed object usually begets another down the line. I'll see if I can find something we can use against it."

"Thanks, Bobby." Sam didn't hold out much hope that he would, but he appreciated the effort.

After he hung up, Sam asked Cass, "Is he okay?"

The fact that Cass paused before answering bothered him. "As well as could be expected. He didn't know what was happening at first. Tenebres is locking him out."

Great. So they couldn't count on Dean being able to do anything from the inside. That was a long shot at best.

Crowley suddenly reappeared, pushing a pair of dark sunglasses onto the top of his head. "I've got three – Lydia, Drusilla, and Sergei – moving into the town right now. They should be engaging him shortly. Your archangel ready?"

A witch named Sergei? Sure, why not? Magic knew no borders. "We're moving ahead without him."

Crowley smirked, and Sam wanted to punch the smug off his face. "Yeah. To be honest I was surprised any of them would talk to you. You're making a hash of their Apocalypse, after all."

Cass almost looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. There was no point in talking to Crowley about any of this, especially his complex relationship with that sibling in particular.

"They know not to hurt Dean, right? It's just Tenebres we want."

The look Crowley gave him was enough to make Sam clench his fists. "Dean is currently the vessel. He's gonna get banged up. There's no avoiding that."

Cass put a hand on Sam's arm, and that was probably the only reason Crowley wasn't choking on his own teeth right now. "I can heal Dean. But if Tenebres isn't out of him, it won't matter."

Sam nodded, accepting that. Cass wouldn't let Dean get hurt for no reason, so he trusted him. Crowley though? Not one bit.

Which was why it killed Sam that he was the only one he could ask about a certain thing.

"Did they replace the angel wards on the town?" Sam asked.

Cass shook his head. "I don't think so. The Circle isn't concerned about angels anymore."

That figured, and it was horrible news. They knew angels weren't enough to stop them. "Can you go ahead and check on our demon witches? I don't want them running amok on the populace."

Sam could see the questions in Cass's eyes, but he nodded, seeing the wisdom in that. Still, he cast a suspicious look at Crowley before he disappeared.

The demon, for his part, sighed and folded up his sunglasses, tucking them in his pocket. "Is this the part where you give me the empty threats if my demons accumulate collateral damage?"

"I think you know that part, so we'll take that as a given. I had another question for you." Sam steeled himself before asking it, because he knew this was a dangerous road. Beyond it, in fact, and one he'd been down way too many times. But if it could save Dean, he would do it. If he could actually use it to do some good, okay. What was a little physical suffering when it came to saving his brother?

Crowley smiled in a way that was truly obscene. He looked so self-satisfied and pleased, it felt like Sam's skin was going to crawl off his body and hide. "You know, Moose, before today you were my least favorite one. I'm starting to come around on you. You have a wicked streak."

"Can it help?"

"Do exactly what I say, and you'll be a bona fide superhero."

Sam glared at him. He didn't know if Crowley was mocking him, and he didn't really care.

No Archangel was going to step in and save Dean. So it was up to Sam to save his brother, and it didn't matter what he had to do to get it done. It would be worth it, as long as it worked.

Whether Dean would forgive him was something to worry about another time.

* * *

By the time Sam and Crowley arrived, the battle was already underway.

The witch demons had apparently possessed a biker looking guy, an elderly woman, and a young skateboarder, none of which made Sam feel any good. It was bad enough they had to possess ordinary people, but did one of them really have to take a kid? That seemed like rubbing his nose in what was a genuinely bad idea. If Dean found out about it, he'd be furious. (And Cass, for the record, didn't look pleased.)

The battleground was currently in front of a church. Well, what used to be a church. It was now nothing more than a pile of rubble beside an empty parking lot, where the warlock in Dean's body was calling down the swirling black clouds of a nascent tornado while the other three witches were casting various spells. It looked like they were conducting an invisible symphony, while the bloody eyed thing in Dean looked like he was barely aware of any of this. They weren't making him break a sweat. At least not yet.

Sam was down the street with Crowley, taking meager cover behind a hedge. Cass was skulking in the background, near the pile of church, and dropped what Sam gave him without fanfare. Crowley then whistled, the signal for the witches to teleport out. They did, leaving Tenebres looking around suspiciously, searching for the trap. He very nearly spotted the flash-bang grenade Cass dropped before it went off.

Sam had looked away and covered his ears, but it still seemed incredibly bright and ferociously loud. He hated setting one off so close to Dean, but they were all banking on Tenebres not expecting an attack of that kind, and besides, the last time he walked the Earth, grenades didn't exist.

Sam looked over the hedge, and as the huge dust cloud cleared, he saw Tenebres on his knees, hands over his ears, face contorted in agony. Sam could smell blood, and saw cuts on Tenebres's arms from the flying debris. It took him a moment to realize he could somehow smell the blood from here, and assumed it was a side effect.

Darkness roiled inside Sam, and it felt so good. It felt better than booze, than drugs, than sex, than everything that had ever existed. He could never tell Dean this, or anybody really, except Ruby, and look what good that did him. It felt so good to let the darkness out and let go, even though something in him also knew it was wrong and far from good. It's what Azazel did to him, what he changed in Sam. But if he could use it as a weapon, fuck it, he was going to use it that way. He just hoped it was enough.

For this to work he had to completely let go, let it take him over, if Crowley could be trusted. And he couldn't, but Sam had already figured it out for himself. He had to completely accept this darkness, this power in him, and let it pull him along. Trying to ride herd on it had failed and never done any good. He had to exert control passively by stepping back and letting it fill him. The thought was terrifying. What if he never was able to come back to himself? What if this altered him for good? Sam liked to think he was strong enough that that would simply never happen. He knew who he was, and he knew he could do this. He was a Winchester, goddamn it. And maybe Cass could do something to bring him back if it went too far.

But if he had to be damned, at least he'd be damned in the service of saving his brother.

The warmth filled him as he stood up, and Sam made himself let go. It felt like he was drowning in ink black waters, slipping beneath heavy waves, but all around him he could suddenly see things he'd never seen before. Like Dean seemed to be radiating a shadow like a dark cloak, black magic made literal. The demon witches popped back into existence, and he could see the energy disturbance before they arrived, and saw the magic of the spells they cast as waves in the air. He saw Tenebres somehow create a magical shield with the wave of his hand before the spells impacted, rolling off the shield like water off a windshield. Holy shit, this was weird. It was like looking into a different world.

Cass was almost unbearable white light, and Sam found it hard to look at him. He let out a blast of energy from his hand and threw his angel blade at the same time, which skewered Tenebres in the chest. The magical shield crumbled under the onslaught of angel energy, but Sam could see the spell Tenebres lashed out with, dark and dense, and wasn't surprised it sent Cass flying. It looked like Tenebres was pulling magic out of the energy in the earth, the air, using it to marshal his forces.

Sam held out his hand, and simply thought about shoving Tenebres away. Crowley said it was all mental, a push with your mind, which made no sense to Sam, but now that he could feel the dark energy thrumming through him, he could almost see the logic behind it. He thought about all his rage, his undercurrent of anger, and mentally threw it at the thing inhabiting Dean.

Sam felt something … not exactly tear in his mind, but strain, sending out a hot dagger of pain that seemed to start at the top of his skull and end at his toes. And Tenebres went flying, slamming into the rubble of the church and sinking beneath it as Sam stalked ever closer to him. The demon witches realized now was their chance and were throwing dark, heavy spells that rent the air asunder, and cause the energy around all of them to shudder. Tenebres let out an angry cry of frustration as the dark clouds above them started losing mass, as his energy and attention was being directed elsewhere. Sam kept pouring out power, letting his anger become an almost tangible thing he could reach out and grab. He thought about separating Tenebres from Dean at the molecular level, tearing him out at the atoms, in the space between genes. He was faintly aware his head was throbbing, and blood was spurting from his nose like it was freshly broken, but he was pushing against that black magic. He could feel it, and when Tenebres's bloody eyes settled on him, Sam saw genuine alarm in them. He didn't know what he was, but he knew he was trouble.

"Sam!" Cass shouted, for what he instantly realized was the second time. Sam glanced at him, and he looked aghast, or as much as a blurry figured somewhere beneath an aura of white light could. "What have you done?"

That's why he didn't tell him what he was doing beforehand. He knew Cass would object. He knew why. He'd have been right to. But he wanted to kick some warlock ass, and he wasn't going to do that as a regular human.

But it was a distraction, and he shouldn't have fallen for it. He heard an angry shout from Tenebres, something old Latin, and Sam got a glimpse of the dark energy bomb headed their way before it hit, sending him and everyone else flying. Sam slammed into Cass and they both hit the street, which was starting to crack and crumble. Sam could feel the earth itself starting to rebel as energy was torn out of it. Tenebres was functioning as some kind of magical vampire, feeding off the energy around him. Unless they could cut him off from it somehow he was always going to rally. "Can we isolate him?" he shouted to Cass, as the winds started picking up. The cloud was reforming, slowly becoming a funnel. Tenebres was pulling it back together.

But now, with his new eyes, Sam saw it wasn't only a weather system. What was that? There was something inside the clouds that shouldn't have been there. Whatever it was, it had the oddest energy signature.

But Sam was distracted by chains that suddenly manifested, exploding up through the road and seemingly crawling across the asphalt, their ghastly hooks seemingly drawn towards Tenebres like homing pigeons. As soon as he saw them, he waved his arm and sent them away, but he grimaced and stumbled. Had he not meant to do that? How had that happened?

Cass had seen it too, and he looked surprised. "Oh no."

"What? What the hell was that?"

"Exactly."

Sam wondered if he missed something, since that was hardly an answer to his question, but Tenebres had recovered and was hitting out hard now, taking down the biker demon witch with a spell that looked like a scythe, and sliced him clean in half. Sam was back on his feet and let out a primal scream of rage as he mentally lashed out with all the demonic energy pumping through his veins. He was aware the front of his shirt was totally sodden with the blood that was still gushing out his nose, and he was a little light headed, but strangely, he still felt really good. The power was a drug, and it was going to keep him high until the end.

Tenebres lashed out with a spell he mostly deflected, but then a huge, car sized piece of asphalt tore itself out of the road and slammed into him, partially crushing him. Cass hit it with a blast of angel energy, reducing it to shards, but as he did Tenebres hit Cass with the same scything spell he hit the biker with.

Luckily it did not cut Cass in half – angels were made of stronger stuff, apparently – but as soon as he hit the ground, Tenebres loomed over him, pulling the angel blade out of his chest. Sam could almost read his mind, but before he could react, he felt his throat constrict, like it was gripped in an invisible fist.

His head throbbed more fiercely, white stars exploding in front of his eyes, and Sam didn't think it was actually anything Tenenbres was doing. He pushed himself too hard, too far, too fast, and now he was paying for it. But even if it made his head explode, he was going to have to push a little farther.

Because he would be damned if he lost to this asshole. And so would everyone else.


	8. Blackest Eyes

_**8- Blackest Eyes**_

Cass grabbed Tenebres's wrist before he could bring the angel blade down, but he was snarling something in Old Latin. Sam couldn't catch most of it, but it was definitely a spell. Those didn't work on angels, did they? Maybe Tenebres was so powerful it didn't matter.

Suddenly, Tenebres was hit by a truck.

It happened so fast, it actually took Sam a few seconds to process what he had just seen. But someone had thrown a pick up truck at Tenebres, and nailed him square on. He went flying away with the truck, and Cass was unharmed. The vehicle crashed down on top of Tenebres about thirty feet farther on down the road.

Sam, still struggling to breathe as blood gurgled down his throat, thought one of the demon witches had done it, but then he heard a familiar voice say, "Nobody roughs up my brother but me."

Gabriel. He'd joined the fight anyway.

Tenebres flung the crumpled remains of the truck away with a savage noise that sounded like a growl, and Sam saw his scalp had torn open and was now gushing blood down one side of his head. He lashed out with a spell, but Gabriel was already gone.

And a train car materialized out of thin air and dropped right on top of Tenebres. The rest of the road shattered with the impact. It wasn't so much a street anymore as a collection of asphalt scree. Gabriel reappeared standing on top of the train car. "Seriously, I could do this all day. Might wanna give up before we reduce Dean to tomato paste. You can't win with me here."

Sam felt the shift in energy, the tremendous push of the spell before the ground started exploding around them, and the train car detonated, sending metal shrapnel flying everywhere. Gabriel was, of course, already gone. Sam got a feeling he was enjoying these hit and run attacks. Actually he seemed to be enjoying all of this, like they weren't fighting some apocalypse wizard and trying to save Dean. But Sam supposed he should be happy he showed up at all.

Sam concentrated, found all that darkness bubbling inside him, and focused, using it to power him back up to his feet. Tenebres was throwing out lots of defensive spells in random directions, probably trying to get Gabriel with something before he appeared again, but one thing Sam had learned about Archangels was they either made a hell of an entrance (earthquakes, lightshow, the whole nine yards), or they gave you absolutely no warning at all. That was just a sliver of the reason they were so dangerous.

The thing with the chains happened again, as they exploded through the ground near Tenebres and this time made it to his ankles before he was aware of them, although Sam didn't know if one of the other witches conjured that up.

Sam focused his attack on Tenebres, mentally trying to tear him out of Dean's body, and by the way Tenebres stumbled, he felt the pull. Sam knew he was in for an ugly spell, but Cass took that moment to blast Tenebres with angel energy, which threw him off. When he turned to attack Cass, Gabriel was suddenly behind him, and he rammed a flaming angel blade right through his back. (Those could be lit on fire?)

From here Sam could smell burning flesh, and it didn't escape him that it was Dean's flesh, but he was too committed to this now. He concentrated on pulling Tenebres out as he staggered, grabbing the angel blade and attempting to pull it out of him, but this time it was much more difficult. His face was still bloody and now also burned, but Sam thought it was from the angel energy more than the flames. He threw a spell, but Gabriel deflected it with a wave of his hand. "Oh please. Like magic could do anything to me? Are you just that stupid, or should I be offended? I mean, I suppose you are an idiot. But I kinda like being offended. It's fun."

Now Sam felt something in his brain tear, and pain sizzled down his spine, electric and metallic. But he was starting to feel something in Tenebres give; his energy signature was fluctuating, and blood was now pouring from his mouth, although that was more an injury to the vessel than him.

Dean was dead, wasn't he? Gabriel had pretty well crushed him, twice. Only Tenebres was keeping the vessel viable. He really hoped Cass could heal such massive body damage. As it was, Sam wasn't feeling great himself. Power and will alone was keeping him on his feet. His brain felt untethered, like it was bouncing around his skull like a loose pinball, and while he got the sense the darkness had taken him over, he was a mere husk right now, a puppet hanging on by a single string. The power had him, but could do nothing with him. That was probably a best case scenario.

"I am the soul of magic," Tenebres gasped. His words sounded liquid and shot through with pain. "I cannot be destroyed."

"Wanna bet?" Gabriel replied, and then held up his hand and gave him a blast of angel energy right in the face. This blast seemed stronger and brighter than Cass's, and sent Tenebres flying into a tiny clump of trees bordering the cemetery. Sam could feel Tenebres, he still had him in his psychic grip, and with what little strength he had left he mentally pulled, and dropped to his knees, too weak to stand and fight at the same time. Sam felt something akin to a break, and wasn't sure if it was Tenebres or something in him. Maybe both? But he suddenly couldn't feel Tenebres anymore. He was gone. Sam turned his head aside and spit out a mouth full of blood, which was the darker, internal blood. That was distressing.

"Going somewhere?" Gabriel asked the witch demons, and the heads of their vessels briefly lit up as Gabriel smote them with a snap of his fingers. The woman and the boy collapsed to the ground, and Sam desperately hoped they were still alive, although he couldn't tell. The dark cloud funnel was dissipating now, and the winds died to nothing.

Cass was already kneeling beside Dean, and before he realized it, Gabriel was kneeling down in front of him, head cocked at a curious angle. "Went the full demon, huh? Was that your bright idea?"

Sam meant to tell him to fuck off – and also thank him – but he couldn't actually speak. It felt like his throat was full of blood. "You are a lot stronger than you should be. By a damn sight. Really I should destroy you too." He raised his hand, fingers ready to snap, and Sam did nothing. He was too tired, and couldn't fight Gabriel regardless. He'd used everything he had against Tenebres. He had no more left to give. In fact, he was relatively sure he was dying already. All Gabriel could do was speed it up.

Gabriel cocked his head the other way, like a scientist not understanding what was happening in his Petri dish. "But I could see Luci throwing a hissy fit if I took you off the board so close to end game. And also it explains why he wants you. To which, I gotta say, sorry. I love Luci, but he is hell on a vessel. No pun intended." Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder, and almost put him through the Earth's crust. Did angels really not know their strength, or was he being a bastard? Kind of hard to tell with him. Gabriel seemed to be a natural bastard. "But I get it, you know? You'll do anything to save your family. Who knew we'd ever have something in common?" Gabriel snapped his fingers and disappeared in the same moment, and Sam suddenly felt better. A lot better.

He felt like himself again. Not only was the weakness and the sense he was dying gone, but the darkness in him was gone. The loss of that sense of power was kind of disappointing – he no longer felt nearly invincible – but at least he felt human. The throbbing in his head was gone, and while his shirt was wet and cold with blood, his nose was no longer bleeding. Gabriel had not only healed him, he seemed to have pulled the demon blood right out of him. Sam remembered him and Dean finding themselves on that plane just seconds before Lucifer burst out of his cage, and suddenly wondered what Gabriel had been doing at that moment. He wouldn't have … would he? Hmm. Maybe it depended on who asked him.

Gabriel was now over by Cass, and he was saying something to him, but Sam didn't hear what. He only heard the last thing he said to Cass, before disappearing. "Don't say I never did anything for you, little brother."

Precisely one second after Gabriel disappeared, Dean sat up, looking around like he wasn't sure what was going on. He was no longer bleeding either.

Dean looked over the passed out (?) people, the ruined church, the destroyed road, and asked, "What the hell happened?"

Cass answered his question with one of his own. "What do you remember?"

That seemed to be a poser. Dean looked down, thinking, but quickly glanced up again, his eyes locking on Sam's. "Sammy. You okay?"

He stood up and held his arms out. "Great." He looked around for Crowley, but he bet he beat a hasty retreat the moment Gabriel showed up. It wasn't like he was fighting anyway. Sam couldn't help but notice he was content to give Sam the demon blood, instructions on how to unlock the power within him, and then stand back and watch him fight. He said he wasn't taking a bullet for them, and he meant it. He probably ran off the moment Sam stepped away from him.

Dean's eyes settled on his shirt as he came over, and Sam reassured him, "This isn't my blood. I'm good. You?"

He looked down at himself, but seemed deeply confused. Cass picked up on that, because he asked again, "What's the last thing you remember?"

Dean glanced at him, brow furrowed. He was trying to work something out, but he didn't know how. "You told me some evil warlock bastard had my body. You guys got him out already?"

Cass and Sam shared a look, and Sam said, "Gabriel did. He actually helped us for once."

Cass was giving him a warning look for lying to his brother, but also made the decision to play along. He probably didn't want to get involved in Winchester drama, and besides, did he really want to tell him Sam drank demon blood and got some tips on letting his inner Azazel out from Crowley? Better to let Dean think the Trickster finally did something for them for once.

Dean, for his part, looked disbelieving. "Why the fuck would he do anything for us?"

"He did it for me," Cass said. That had the added benefit of not even being a lie. "He owed me that at least."

Dean stared at him a moment, but it was out of shock. He trusted Cass not to lie to him. "I keep forgetting you're related to that douchbag. No offense."

"None taken?" Cass really did make that sound like a question. Maybe he didn't see how that could insult him.

They got out of there, and checked into the nearest motel. Dean was still suspicious, as if he could feel the gaps in his memory, and Sam was kind of suspicious too. It was possible Tenebres kept him locked out the whole time, but it seemed strange. When Dean left to get some snacks from the corner store – he was desperate for a beer – Sam took the opportunity to question Cass. He'd already changed into clothes that weren't bloody, and felt like he could almost pretend he hadn't gone "full demon", as Gabriel had said. But oh yes he had. He could still feel the echo of that sweet, sweet power, and the satisfaction of knowing he ripped the last bits of Tenebres out of Dean. "Is something going on I should know about?"

Cass looked faintly troubled, but that had been true since they left the fight. "Do you remember the chains?"

"Yeah, what was that?"

"Hell memories. I guess Dean decided the way to fight Tenebres was to inundate him with those."

Wow. It was rare, but Dean still occasionally had violent nightmares, and Sam assumed they were about Hell. His refusal to talk about them pretty much cemented that. "So the chains manifesting were what, Tenebres getting distracted?"

Cass nodded. "But in flooding Tenebres's mind with them, Dean kind of … lost himself."

Sam had to puzzle that one out. "I don't understand."

"I could heal most of his physical injuries, but I wasn't strong enough to do anything about that. Gabriel could, though."

Again, Cass seemed to be talking around something. But there was a logical end point. "Are you saying he lost his mind?"

"He was virtually catatonic. I wasn't getting through to him."

So that's what Gabriel meant when he said that thing to Cass. His favor was pasting Dean's sanity back together, and erasing the evidence. "So, fighting Tenebres, Dean went crazy, and I went demonic?"

Cass shrugged. "Fighting a warlock of his caliber wasn't going to be easy."

Sam almost laughed, but couldn't quite manage it. "Why do I have a terrible feeling this is a preview of the Apocalypse?"

"It's not. That battle will probably be even worse." Now that really startled a laugh out of Sam. Cass glanced at him with a worried frown. "Why is that funny?"

"Because right now, it's hard to imagine worse." Worse than crazy and demonic? What the hell was left? Blown into a billion pieces and yet still conscious? Yeah, that may have been it.

Cass considered that a moment. "I suppose that could be humorous."

"It's a fucking laugh riot." He sat forward, and rested his head in his hands. He had no craving for demon blood at all, so a least Gabriel had taken the urge for it right out of his system. But that was just more ammunition for the "put us on the plane" theory.

"You could tell him," Cass said, and it took him a moment to understand what he was referring to. Then he knew, mainly because of the scolding look in Cass's eyes.

Sam shook his head. "He's better off not knowing."

"Sam –"

"How does it help him, knowing how far as I was willing to go to save him? Do you want to tell him he was crazy too? Let's just keep this our secret, okay?"

Cass didn't look happy about having to keep secrets from Dean. But surely he saw the wisdom in it. "Gabriel doesn't deserve all the credit for killing Tenebres."

"Let him have it. I have enough kills on my ledger." Sam found himself wondering, if Lucifer somehow took him over, if that's how the power would feel. Oh hell, it was probably one-one thousandth of how that would feel. It was probably a rush beyond rushes, a high that made everything pale by comparison. He hated to say he could see the appeal, but he could. He totally could.

Sam made an excuse about calling Bobby so he could step outside, and take a deep breath. He didn't want to have these thoughts around Cass, because it was more than possible he could pick up on his thoughts.

Sam was not one for denial or suppression; he left that to Dean, and hey, for the most part, he made it work for him. But just the idea that he could see the appeal in embracing that power bothered him. He didn't want it. That power seemed too much, too toxic. It would easily warp him into a Tenebres type or a Lucifer type. It was easy to see how you could live for chasing that rush, until there was nothing but that. Power feeding power to acquire more power; an endless loop, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But seeing and understanding the appeal was one thing. Sam didn't want any of it. It felt good, but it also felt ugly. He could taste the evil in the back of his throat. Dean lost himself to the madness of Hell, and Sam had almost lost himself to the power. But ultimately he didn't. He almost rode it until it killed him, but he didn't let it control him. Could he consider that a victory?

Sam decided he would. Maybe this was a good omen for the Apocalypse after all. They beat one crazy, overpowered bastard. He was willing to bet they could beat the Devil too.

And, in spite of it all, Sam felt more hopeful than he had for some time.

* * *

The End


End file.
